Outside, temperatures can soar to plus 30°C, but the L+Snow resort, which opened in September 2024, is the world’s largest indoor ski resort. It’s an energy-intensive way of dealing with the climate crisis’s effect on winter sports, requiring 72 cooling machines and 33 snowmaking machines to maintain optimal winter conditions under a roof.

Could this be the future of skiing? Or rather, does skiing have a future at all in a world that’s being lashed  by climate change? It’s a major concern for resort operators, environmental researchers and, of course, winter sports enthusiasts witnessing rising temperatures and vanishing snow.

Last year, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, known as FIS, had to cancel 26 out of 616 World Cup races because of lack of snow and warm weather, prompting it to form a new partnership with the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to raise awareness that “winter sports and tourism face a bleak future because of climate change” unless more is done. In early 2023, 200 of the world’s top skiers sent a letter to FIS demanding more action on climate change, calling for a “geographically reasonable” race schedule with less intercontinental travel and a shift in the season to account for changing weather patterns.

“Climate change is, simply put, an existential threat to skiing and snowboarding. We would be remiss if we did not pursue every possible effort that is rooted in science and objective analysis,” FIS president Johan Eliasch said in a news release announcing the partnership in October.

According to WMO, global temperatures between January and September 2024 were 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. “Ruined winter vacations and cancelled sports fixtures are – literally – the tip of the iceberg of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “Retreating glaciers, reduced snow and ice cover and thawing permafrost are having a major impact on mountain ecosystems, communities and economies and will have increasingly serious repercussions at [the] local, national and global level for centuries to come.”

Ski resorts struggle to make up for lost snow

Around the world, ski resorts are scrambling to adapt. Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum holds its annual high-level talks about how the world is changing, is home to some of the planet’s best skiing and the longest-running series of high-altitude, day-by-day data on snow depth. The statistics show that since 1971, when the WEF first met in Davos, the area’s snowpack has thinned by more than 40%.

Davos and other areas have turned to snow farming – stockpiling natural snow when it falls to be moved to slopes and trails where the coverage would otherwise be too patchy. A 2023 study by French and Austrian scientists published in Nature Climate Change looked at 2,234 ski resorts in 28 European countries. The study found that without snowmaking, more than half of these resorts risk not having enough snow if global warming reaches 2°C – and nearly all will be wiped out if temperatures warm by 4°C.

It’s not enough for individual resorts to act alone. The power is in education, advocacy and combining our efforts.

– Geoff Buchheister, CEO, Aspen Skiing Company

Snowmaking can be of particular help to small mountains, in areas like Eastern Canada, where 76% of skiable terrain in Quebec and 95% in Ontario already have artificial facilities. But making snow is impractical at many larger sites such as B.C.’s Whistler Blackcomb, which has nearly 8,200 acres (3,300 hectares) to cover, says Daniel Scott, geography and environmental management professor at Ontario’s University of Waterloo. 

“There’s a cost for the water, the refrigeration and moving the snow,” says Scott, who is also executive director of the Waterloo Climate Institute and a board member of Protect Our Winters, a global organization that’s amassing research into the future of snow sports and how to conduct them more sustainably.

The climate pros and cons of snow-making

The great hurdle is reducing the planet-warming emissions involved in making all that snow. One study Scott conducted with colleagues in Innsbruck, Austria, found that the energy needed to produce artificial snow for resorts across Canada in one year equals the energy used by 17,000 homes, producing some 130,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and using 43.4 million cubic metres of water.

Most of the water is returned to lakes, streams and the ground, but the energy required for all this snowmaking is about 478,000 megawatt hours. Scott says that the environmental impact of snowmaking can be lessened by improved technology, better water conservation and the conversion of electrical systems to renewable, lower- or zero-carbon grids. 

He adds that “snowmaking can actually help reduce total emissions from tourism when it enables millions of skiers to ski regionally instead of driving or flying to far-off ski resorts or selecting another type of carbon-intense holiday. Net-zero-compatible ski holidays are already possible in destinations like Quebec.” 

That said, smaller resorts tend to struggle with snowmaking costs, and only so much can be done when temperatures continue to hover above zero. Even a place like Ontario’s Blue Mountain, with a massive snowmaking system and access to Georgian Bay water, couldn’t open at Christmas in 2023 because of the weather.

How ski resorts are diversifying – and taking action on climate

Major resorts such Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico are going all out to lessen their carbon footprints, worrying about not only whether they can cover their slopes, but also how they can contribute less to the climate emergency that’s causing the snow decline. 

“We’re North America’s only certified B Corp ski resort,” says Dawn Boulware, vice president of environmental and social responsibility at Taos Ski Valley. (In France, the Les Arcs/Peisey-Vallandry area was certified in 2023.) This is the certification given by non-profit B Lab for companies committed to environmental stewardship and social responsibility. 

“We became carbon-neutral in 2022, we’ve electrified or are electrifying all our on-mountain buildings, use 100% solar energy in daytime and are testing an electric-powered snowcat groomer,” Boulware says. 

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Even with snowmaking, the prospect of ski-free winters looms large.

“There is a basic playbook for how ski resorts continue in a warming world,” says Auden Schendler, senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen One in Colorado, which operates four mountains: Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk. Beyond increasing their snowmaking and water storage sustainably, he says that resorts need to “diversify into summer activities like mountain biking and hiking and offer winter activities beyond skiing,” he explains in an email interview.

Resorts of all sizes are taking measures to attract non-skiers year-round, adding attractions like luxury spas and promoting sales of pay-in-advance annual passes, to secure money up front no matter what the season is like. 

Knowing they face an uphill battle, Aspen One’s leaders are going beyond reducing the company’s footprint and using their lobbying power to push governments to take action against the very emissions that are putting their industry at risk. “We started lobbying Washington for climate action in 2004,” Schendler says. “We installed the first solar power array in the ski industry.” Aspen One also built the first electricity plant in the United States to run on biogas waste methane (that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere). 

“We need to fight the larger political battles. Our lobbying paved the way for huge supplies of renewables in Colorado today,” Schendler says. The resort’s parent Aspen Skiing Company is outspoken against actions it considers to be greenwashing, such as carbon offsets, and it produces a detailed annual sustainability report that it hopes will inspire others in the ski industry and the larger corporate world. 

“It’s not enough for individual resorts to act alone. The power is in education, advocacy and combining our efforts,” says Geoff Buchheister, chief executive officer of Aspen Skiing Company.

“Skiing does have a future – if we take action together.”

David Israelson is a writer, non-practising lawyer and communications consultant in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The post How ski resorts are adapting to climate change appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That’s the consensus among experts looking at surveys analysing the companies and sectors that have made the most progress in balancing men and women on their boards and in their C-suites.

“No, we’re not making enough progress – we need to be moving much faster,” says Jennifer Reynolds, president and CEO of Women in Capital Markets, a nationwide network that advocates for women in this part of the financial sector.

“In the first two years, the OSC has found – and I agree – that the uptake [in encouraging gender balance] has been dismal,” says Pamela Jeffery, founder and principal of the Pamela Jeffery Group, which advises companies on diversity.

This year’s surveys looked at how Canadian companies have been faring since 2014, when the Ontario Securities Commission and other regulators in Canada brought in new disclosure rules aimed at making the gender compositions of corporate boards and management more transparent.

Mandatory disclosure

The OSC took what lawyers call a “mandatory disclosure” approach. It did not require companies to adopt any specific target.

The OSC rules are based on the principle of “comply or explain.” If companies fall short of gender parity goals, they simply have to say what happened and why, with no penalty.

Reynolds, Jeffery and other experts agree that this year’s results are at best, underwhelming.

The highest-ranking company, HSBC Canada, received an overall score of 58.5 per cent – a composite of having 50 per cent women on its board and 67 per cent in its executive offices. These numbers also earned the financial sector the highest-ranking industry in the latest survey.

Last on the top 10 was Second Cup. Only 16.7 per cent of its board is female, while women make up 57 per cent of its executive workforce for a combined score of 36.8 per cent.

Real estate companies dominated the top 10 with six on the list: Sienna Senior Living, Extendicare, Dream Hard Asset Alternatives Trust, Chartwell Retirement Residences, Wall Financial and Dream Office Real Estate Investment Trust.

Communications and entertainment companies also made the top 10: TVA Group and Torstar, along with Second Cup, categorized as retail.

When ranked by industry, the top sectors in the survey in order were: financial services, real estate, communications and entertainment, biotechnology, retail, transportation, utilities, manufacturing, oil and gas, mining and “other” (Pizza Pizza Royalty).

Targets vs. quotas

In Ontario, Premier Kathleen Wynne called for businesses to set a gender-diversity target of 30 per cent on their boards by the end of this year, with a subsequent target of 40 per cent by 2019. Wynne accepted 11 recommendations made by Catalyst, a not-for-profit group dedicated to boosting workplace diversity.

In a report issued last year, Catalyst called the OSC reporting requirements a step in the right direction, but its overall view was that, “Canada continues to lag behind other developed nations in terms of gender balance on corporate boards.”

Catalyst’s 11 recommendations included calling for “more stringent legislative or regulatory approaches” if sufficient progress is not made toward the 30 per cent target endorsed by the premier.

“Europe, where legal requirements for women’s representation exist in many countries, leads the world,” Catalyst’s report said.

Catalyst’s research led to the question of whether the OSC and Canada’s other securities regulators need more robust regulation and should consider explicit targets for male-female balance and perhaps even quotas.

For example, Norway brought in gender quotas in 2003, giving companies until 2008 to meet the standards it set or face penalties. While Norwegian companies didn’t quite meet the 40 per cent standard, they went from 6.8 per cent women on boards in 2002 to 35.5 per cent in 2014, the highest in the world.

Britain followed up on a 2010 recommendation by Lord Davies of Abersoch, who stopped short of calling for quotas but suggested explicit targets for gender parity.

Women’s representation on FTSE 100 boards has more than doubled since 2011 to reach 26.1 per cent in 2015. Significantly, by 2015 there were no companies on the FTSE 100 with all-male boards.

In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies to disclose their boards’ gender balance, but companies that do not have diversity policies are not required to explain why not

In 2014, women held 19.2 per cent of board seats in the U.S., and Catalyst notes that this simple disclosure policy “is widely viewed as ineffective.”

What next for Canada?

What should the OSC and Canada do to boost gender parity?

“In our 150^th year, we could be and should be talking about being a global leader,” says Ellen Auster, professor of strategic management at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

She and other experts agree that setting explicit quotas for male-female balance would be a hard sell in Canada.

“With quotas, we get the whole notion of glass cliffs – putting women on boards but not supporting them or tapping their knowledge and expertise,” Auster says.

She says more research and information is needed too about the companies and sectors that are falling far short of balance. She would like to know what’s stopping such companies to know better how to overcome the obstacles.

“We probably should better understand the barriers and provide support rather than blaming them.”

Both Reynolds and Jeffery say that rather than quotas, the OSC and its counterparts should go for targets, along the line of the 30 per cent target called for by Ontario.

“Targets are an aspirational goal that companies have for all their other business aspirations,” Reynolds notes. They set targets for revenues and earnings, so why not parity, she adds.

Targets would help companies address an issue that’s not just about right and wrong, Jeffery says.

“I believe that the regulation needs to be strengthened in order to deliver the outcomes that we all want to see – improving our economy and delivering better financial results.”

The post Top Canadian firms on women’s leadership appeared first on Corporate Knights.