Message from the President & CEO
 In our 2005 Sustainability Report, I stated that one of our biggest environmental setbacks of the year was our inability to finance and install a 220 kW solar energy system in the sunniest place in the country – Death Valley. While we lost that battle, I vowed not to give up on this project because I know that weaning our company off fossil fuels could be the most important environmental achievement we could ever accomplish. With a scientific consensus on human-induced climate change and obvious national security issues surrounding our country’s dependence upon fossil fuels, I’m not sure that there exists a more salient environmental issue for our generation, than global warming.
So, we asked ourselves, “What is the biggest step we could take to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels?” We concluded that installing the largest privately-owned zero-emission renewable energy system in the country would be the best solution – for now.
At the time this report goes to print, a one-megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system is being designed and constructed at our Death Valley operations. This system, the size of seven football fields, will consist of more than 5,700 solar panels. It will generate on site more than 2.2 million kWh per year for the next 30 years – or more. This is enough electricity to power more than 700 American homes a year. It will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 1.53 million pounds each year for more than 30 years, totaling 23,000 tons of CO2, a more than four percent companywide reduction.
This system is not only one of the largest non-utility PV energy systems in the country; we believe it is also the largest in the entire U.S. tourism industry and among all national
park concessioners.
I make this announcement proudly because it has taken months of planning and millions of dollars to make this happen. It is our most prominent example of how much Xanterra cares about the environment and the parks where we operate. It helps us meet our 2015 Environmental Vision goal of reducing fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent. In fact, with our greenhouse gas emissions down more than 20 percent since 2000 (normalized), we’re more than half way to meeting a goal that, just a few years ago, we thought would be impossible. This is a testament to what can be achieved once a company, its leadership, its owners, and all of its employees, sets its mind to making a change.
Still, this PV system is only one of many new environmental initiatives we’ve undertaken recently. For example, our national park solid waste recycling and diversion rate has made astounding improvements in the last two years thanks to composting successes at Yellowstone. We’ve now exceeded federal Executive Order goals of a 50 percent diversion rate. We power 18 percent of our national park operations with renewable energy. We made significant strides in conserving water in Death Valley, having dedicated over a million dollars to that effort last year. We completed our second LEED-certified building (rated Silver) at Crater Lake, still one of only a few such LEED-certified buildings in the entire national or state parks business. And this past year we received a special honor, when EPA Administrator, Stephen Johnson, gave Xanterra the Corporate Leader award for demonstrating superior corporate-wide environmental performance. Xanterra is only the fourth company to receive this designation from the EPA.
But the news isn’t always good, and sometimes we learn more from our failures than our successes. For example, our companywide CAFÉ results actually decreased in the past two years, meaning that our fleet of vehicles is actually less efficient than it once was. I’ve now asked our environmental affairs department to review all vehicle purchases to prevent further backsliding. We even had a minor oil leak last year. While no resources were damaged and we’ve aggressively begun remediation, we prefer to focus our efforts on not letting mistakes like this happen in the first place.
In 2007, the company grew significantly with the addition of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Canyon Railway. I am confident that we will advance these operations – which currently have no environmental programs, no environmental management systems, and no energy or waste management initiatives – to our standard of more environmentally
sustainable operations.
We know that the effort to operate our business in an environmentally responsible manner requires constant vigilance. So, we continually ask ourselves: Do our environmental initiatives actually reduce our impact on the parks and planet? If so, is it enough? Because we are serious about change, serious enough that we even admit our mistakes, we are willing, even as a private company, to publish this report, show complete transparency, and be held accountable to our guests, our employees, the National Park Service, and the public at large.
We believe that this kind of accountability is the future of the modern environmental movement. We hope to be among its leaders.
As I see it, we really have no choice: businesses must learn to succeed both financially and ecologically. Otherwise, we jeopardize our irreplaceable natural resources, as well as the future generations that depend upon them.
Andrew N. Todd
President & CEO
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