Carving out a greener future: how the Swiss ski resort of Laax is meeting the climate crisis head on

Gondolas on demand, electric piste-grooming and chemical-free snow cannons – how Laax is ‘greenstyling’ its future

It’s the worst ski resort nightmare: hillsides of shaggy yellow grass streaked with slush under a leaden sky that’s coughing up sleet. Parts of Europe – places previously accustomed to crisp snow fields and pristine blue skies – are now facing this calamity, something meteorologists might describe as a British winter.

Not everywhere, of course. Only lower altitudes are seeing such disasters. Higher up, normal service continues. I’m in the Swiss resort of Laax, where most of the slopes are at about 2,000 metres, lofty enough to be snow-secure, for now. The halfpipe is busy with dudes in baggy trousers and headphones nonchalantly practising their double corks. On the traditional pistes there are four-year-olds who could probably ski before they could walk. And then – Switzerland has its wacky side – three young men in first-world-war greatcoats on antique wooden skis propel themselves with rough-hewn quarter-staves.

Is all this destined to disappear, perhaps in our children’s lifetimes? To put it in stark, white and black terms: are ski resorts in the same predicament as oil-dependent desert states, watching their one key source of wealth dwindle and disappear?

If so, Laax is not going down without a fight. This unusual Swiss resort, close to the Austrian border, is making a bold attempt to be carbon neutral by 2030, a goal that requires cutting out all oil use, making all energy generation sustainable, and reducing food waste to zero. Stung by climate crisis criticism levelled at the ski industry, this community is now far ahead of most. What I have come to see may turn out to be the future of winter sports.