How WatchWire Reduces Taos Ski Valley’s Utility Costs and Supports their Sustainability Goals

About Taos Ski Valley 

Taos Ski Valley is a pioneer when it comes to their sustainability initiatives and exemplifying the highest standards of ESG performance. From becoming the first (and still only) Certified B Corporation ski resort in the world, to exhibiting transparency into their carbon footprint and net zero goals, Taos Ski Valley is leading the way in the outdoor recreation space. Being a Certified B Corp means Taos Ski Valley uses their business as a force for good for the environment, workplace, community, and guests by providing a framework to conduct business in a responsible manner that benefits all stakeholders. Learn more about Taos Ski Valley here.

Taos Ski Valley Sustainability Goals

This sincere effort towards building a socially and environmentally responsible ski resort stems from Taos Ski Valley’s origins being steeped in respect for local culture, and deep connections to the mountain ecosystem upon which their business is based. As a ski resort that relies on local weather patterns and the longevity of a thriving winter ecosystem, Taos Ski Valley views the threat of climate change as existential to their business and the sports of skiing and snowboarding.  This has fueled the resort to create meaningful and tangible sustainability goals in alignment with their mission to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

How Taos Ski Valley is Meeting Their Sustainability Goals 

Beyond ambitious goal setting, Taos Ski Valley truly delivers on their promises. Already, the resort has made actionable strides towards decarbonization by achieving a CarbonNeutral® Certification (in addition to its B Corp certification), utilizing high-quality, third-party verified carbon offsets in its portfolio of carbon reduction strategies as a step in their journey towards net zero.  In addition, Taos Ski Valley is reducing greenhouse gas emissions in new construction, focusing on the electrification of all on-mountain buildings, investing in efficiency retrofits in existing buildings, and transitioning to carbon-free alternatives in their mountain operation vehicle fleet, including the first all-electric snow grooming machine in North America (shown below).

How WatchWire Supports These Goals 

The reality of managing utility and sustainability data points across disparate sources to keep up with goals and meet reporting requirements can be daunting for organizations like Taos Ski Valley, which has a diverse array of sustainability initiatives to manage. To streamline and enhance the data management and project planning of these initiatives, Taos Ski Valley is partnering with Tango. Tango’s Energy and Sustainability Platform,  WatchWire, assists Taos Ski Valley in automated utility data ingestion, carbon accounting, real-time facilities, and equipment management to conduct proper maintenance and check for anomalies, complete month-over-month and year-over-year usage and cost comparisons, and more. 

Taos Ski Valley understands that meticulous energy and utility bill management is the bedrock of an effective decarbonization strategy. So far with Tango Energy and Sustainability, Taos Ski Valley has been able to monitor and verify operational changes at their buildings, catch billing errors, and quantify carbon inventories:

• Taos Ski Valley has utilized the platform to monitor and verify systematic changes throughout the ski resort, namely at The Blake.  This LEED-certified Silver hotel underwent significant operational changes implemented by the engineering staff last year, which resulted in a drastic 18% reduction in natural gas use in 2023 compared to the previous year. The powerful analytics offered by WatchWire enabled the facilities and engineering teams to visualize their work to reduce utility usage and costs month over month. 
• WatchWire has caught a handful of billing errors, metering issues, and utility account discrepancies. In January, Taos Ski Valley staff was sent an automated alert via the platform of a high bill at one of their base-area facilities.  This alert revealed an error in billing by the utility and resulted in more than $5,000 of savings from the utility and highlighted just how important a utility data management system is to their operations. 
• Taos Ski Valley performs annual carbon inventories, which usually take a lot of time and energy from multiple departments. With WatchWire, the process has been streamlined, providing emissions data viewable at any time. The resort is continuing to add data from non-utility sources to create a robust, holistic view of their scope 1 and 2 emissions within the platform. 

Overall, Tango’s solution has improved efficiency and presented cost savings for Taos Ski Valley.  Where previously their utility data management consisted of manual cost and usage reports at the end of the month or quarter, the platform automates and simplifies their processes, eliminating errors and unnoticed invoice anomalies.

Tango’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Andy Anderson states, “In partnering with Taos Ski Valley, we are building on an ever-growing line of responsible partnerships for sustainable development. As stringent sustainability reporting regulations and expectations come into play in the U.S. and globally, Tango is cognizant of our role as the missing data collection piece of the reporting puzzle. By leveraging our proprietary technology to empower our clients with the highest data accuracy, audibility, and accountability of their energy and sustainability data, we hope to be the catalyst for action and results, taking clients, like Taos Ski Valley, from goal setting to impact.”