A case study regarding the carbon footprint for one day trips to different ski destinations in the Jamtland region

Abstract: Currently, World is facing global warming, which threats especially winter tourism. Many glaciers started to melt significantly as well as winter seasons get warmer and shorter in many ski areas (Gilaberte-Búrdaloa, et al., 2014). It is a really important issue and challenge especially for ski resorts. However, in spite of ski resorts there are also millions of tourists visiting ski destinations every year. Due to that it should also be important to all those winter enthusiasts to know and reduce their own impacts on environment, if they still want to enjoy snow-based sports and natural beauty of a mountain environment. Due to that, this study chosen to focus on emissions from ski trips seeing form the perspective of the skier in one of the most famous ski region in Sweden. The carbon footprint concept was used to calculate and compare four trips to different ski destinations such as Åre, Vemdalen, Frösön and Storulvån. From each trip the following factors where considered: emissions from production of ski equipment, emissions from skier travel, from purchased electricity in the ski resort and from consumption of fuel by vehicles on the slopes. At least six transportation scenarios per destination were created to investigate possible modes of transportation and their impacts. The results showed that the total amount of carbon footprint per skier differed among the trips from 74.01 kg to 2.40 kg of CO₂-eq. per skier depends on the transportation scenario and destination. It was concluded that skier travel can be a huge source of emissions depending on the distance to chosen destination and type of the transport. However, it was found out that impact from skier travel as well as from ski equipment can be reduced by individual’s choices. Moreover, it was also concluded that the fuel consumed by vehicles on the slopes had a significant impact in all ski resorts and it should become the major issue for ski resorts to find new solutions and practices, which would reduce the amount of emissions..