Little Jiminy Peak, tucked up in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, might not offer much in the way of vertical feet, but high to looker’s right stands something few other resorts can match: a wind turbine spinning out a small town’s worth of emission-free electricity. Jiminy’s main demand for electricity comes from snowmaking. As climate change kicks in—or kicks harder—snow will be in shorter supply. But bigger demand for snowmaking means more emissions to power snowmaking equipment—an environmental Catch-22 that Jiminy hopes to soothe. But the green thing wasn’t Jiminy’s primary reason for going wind-power. “I don’t want to come across like, ‘Oh look how wonderful we are’,” says Jiminy CEO Brian Fairbank. Jiminy’s electricity bills were “through the roof”; the turbine allowed them to stabilize those costs for the next decade. That stability stretches further than the base area’s boundaries, too: Surplus power produced by the turbine is fed back into the local grid, enabling nearby townships to get green power without paying a green premium. jiminypeak.com
Photo by Tate Michael Davidson/Getty Images
