HANCOCK, Mass. — Brian Fairbank had tried just about everything to cut the costs of running his Jiminy Peak ski resort: He used recycled motor oil to heat its mountain operations center, developed more efficient snow guns, captured heat generated by snowmaking machines, even installed waterless toilets.
Still, his annual electric bill hit $635,000.
So Fairbank decided to do what no ski resort owner had done: install a giant windmill to make his own power.
Other ski resorts, smarting from criticism over soaring energy and water use as well as their impact on fragile ecosystems, are watching Jiminy’s 386-foot, $3.9 million turbine to see whether it might work elsewhere.
The wind turbine, nicknamed Zephyr after the Greek god of the west wind, has become a tourist attraction at southern New England’s largest ski resort. It also cut Fairbank’s electricity costs by $200,000 last year — the first full year the turbine was operational.
“The wind turbine came about because we had done all these things and there was no more low-hanging fruit,” said Fairbank, who has run the resort for three decades. “We now make twice the amount of snow, with half the amount of money that we did 15 years ago.”
David Rooney, president of the nonprofit Berkshire Economic Development Corp., said Jiminy Peak has become a model for large-scale renewable energy production at ski resorts.
“I think that it’s changed the skiing experience in that it’s shown skiers that you can have renewable-energy projects right on the mountain side, that you can bring renewable energy together with your skiing experience,” Rooney said. “Green skiing sells.”
