Climate change and the call for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the efficient use of (renewable) energy, and more resilient winter tourism regions, forces ski resorts across the European Alps to look for “smart” approaches to transition towards a sustainable, low-carbon economy. Drawing on the smart-city concept and considering the different historical developments of Alpine resorts, the Smart Altitude Decision-Making Toolkit was developed using a combination of an energy audit tool, a WebGIS, and collaborative and innovative living labs installed in Les Orres (France), Madonna di Campiglio (Italy), Krvavec (Slovenia), and Verbier (Switzerland). This step-by-step Decision-Making Toolkit enables ski resorts to get feedback on their energy demand, an overview of the locally available sources of renewable energy, and insights regarding their potential for improving their energy efficiency by low-carbon interventions. The Decision-Making Toolkit is suitable for knowledge transfer between stakeholders within living labs and moreover provides the flexibility for tailor-made low-carbon strategies adapting to the unique assets and situatedness of ski resorts.

We compare simulated energy retrofitting of individual buildings with energy refurbishments optimized at the scale of the neighborhood. For the neighborhood case, buildings can also be connected together through a heat network. We use a detailed three-dimensional model to estimate heating needs (CitySim) and a mixed-integer linear optimizer to analyze different options for energy refurbishment, including various heating technologies. According to our simulations, planning at the neighborhood scale results in slightly lower costs (about -5%) and lower C0₂ emissions (about -60%) than planning energy refurbishment at the building scale, showing that integrated planning of energy refurbishment is beneficial from both environmental and economical points of view.