December 14, 2006

Aspen Sells Tags to Offset Guests’ Travel Emissions

Aspen Skiing Company is partnering with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to sell Green-e certified SkiGreen Tags to resort guests who wish to offset their travel-related emissions to and from the resort with wind energy. SkiGreen Tags can be added to a season pass for $20, or guests can purchase a single day SkiGreen Tag with each lift ticket for $2.

In March, Aspen Skiing Company, which operates four ski mountains and two hotels in Colorado, purchased renewable energy certificates from wind farms to offset 100 percent of its electricity use.

The offset program makes sense. Unlike Whole Foods selling wind power cards, a purchase unrelated to shopping at Whole Foods, the SkiGreen Tags are directly related to an action Aspen’s customers are taking - travelling to the resort. In that way it mirrors the program Terrapass and Expedia put together earlier this year.

According to Adam Stein, VP of Marketing for TerraPass, that deal worked because TerraPass and Expedia linked “the offset directly to consumer behavior -? which is something that people seem to be more comfortable doing -? rather than buying them as a stand alone item.”

Each $20 SkiGreen Tag represents one Megawatt-hour of renewable power generation and offsets approximately 1,400 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily measured as carbon dioxide. Each $2 SkiGreen Tag represents 100 kilowatt-hours of renewable generation and is the equivalent of approximately 150 miles driven.

BEF has committed to reinvest 20 percent of all consumer sales from Green Tags sold in Aspen into the community for new local renewable energy projects through a partnership with The City of Aspen’s Canary Initiative.

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