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Snowmaking is a crucial adaptation strategy for ski tourism in the face of climate change. Although snowmaking has been the subject of controversial debates in both the scientific community and the media, there have been few studies to date on its resource consumption. This study provides the first survey-based analysis on water usage, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with snowmaking in a major ski tourism market, namely Austria. Projections for all Austrian ski areas show water usage to be between 48.9 and 53.4 million m3 (930–1,020 liters per skier visit, 2,749 to 3,002m3 per hectare) and electricity requirements of 260 to 309GWh (between 5 and 6kWh per skier visit, 14,635 to 17,390kWh per hectare) per season. Carbon emissions largely depend on the energy mix, ranging from 120 to 1,230g CO2e per skier visit. Compared to guests’ travel activities to and from the destinations, emissions caused by snowmaking are small. Our results can serve as a benchmark for ski areas to improve resource efficiency and for more sustainable destination governance. With this paper, we want to recalibrate and objectify a contested climate adaptation debate by replacing assumption-based estimates with large-scale ski lift operator data.
Aigner et al. (Fri,) studied this question.