Aspen Partners With Coal Mine To Create Clean Energy

This week Aspen/Snowmass made American business history by being the first company in the U.S. to partner with a mine to create clean energy. This groundbreaking project at the Elk Creek Mine in Somerset, Colo. generates three-megawatts of power annually which is the same amount of energy that Aspen Skiing Company uses in a year.

Auden Schendler, Vice President of Sustainability, Aspen Skiing Company, chimes in on why this unexpected partnership matters to the ski/snowboard industry.

If were trying to be green, we have to do something about our energy use. This is real, big-scale, clean energy production, says Schendler. We have to start to think creatively about how we get energy or were going to fail to solve climate change.

Science behind the project

In short, this $6 million investment in technology is similar to a large truck engine that runs on methane rather than diesel. The methane a gas and a byproduct of a coal mine is captured and piped into a 16 cylinder engine. The methane is then burned to produce electricity that is fed into the electric grid.