The Department of Conservation has put a pointed question to NZSki over its proposed $150 million expansion of The Remarkables into the Doolans Basin, and it is exactly the question any competent lender or investor would ask first. As the Otago Daily Times reported on 4 July 2026, DOC has formally queried whether the expansion would actually make the skifield more resilient to climate change, or whether NZSki has simply assumed the problem away.
The expansion is not small. The proposal would take the skifield from 449 hectares to 711 hectares, making The Remarkables New Zealand’s largest, add the country’s longest gondola at 2.7km, and run over a four-year construction timeline. NZSki lodged the fast-track application with the Environmental Protection Authority on 20 May 2026 and is seeking a 40-year concession term on public conservation land.
The economic prize is real
The upside is genuine, which is why this matters beyond Queenstown. An independent economic assessment projects daily visitor capacity rising from 3,500 to 6,000, with annual visitor spend lifting from $235 million to between $347 million and $402 million within a decade of completion, and 1,851 jobs created across the mountain and the wider town. Nobody serious is arguing alpine tourism is not worth investing in.
The issue is the assumptions underpinning a 40-year bet on snow.
The number DOC already has
Here is the awkward part. DOC does not need to speculate about climate risk at The Remarkables because its own 2023 concession recommendations report modelled it. That report found the top section averaged 105 days a year with snow depth over 30cm in the 1990s. Under a mid-range emissions scenario that falls to 87 days by 2040 and 75 days by 2090. Under high emissions it drops to 58 days by 2090 – roughly a 45% reduction in viable snow days over the life of the concession being sought.
Against that, NZSki’s formal EPA response leans on research published in 2012 which found high-altitude ski areas were comparatively well positioned to retain viable snow, particularly with technological intervention. Citing a 14-year-old study to answer a question about the next 40 years is not a knockout argument.
NZSki’s case may hold, but it isn’t public
To be fair, NZSki has real points. CEO Paul Anderson argued in June 2026 that the Doolans Basin is “higher, south-east-facing, catches more snow, and is shady so snow doesn’t melt as quickly.” In a later interview published 26 July 2026, Anderson acknowledged DOC “asked valid questions about climate change” but said NZSki’s own examination of 40 years of snowfall found it “actually trending up which was probably not what we expected to see.” He argued weather variability, not gradual warming, is the bigger operational challenge, with snowmaking a “fantastic piece of insurance against variability.”
That could all be true. The problem is that the geographic advantages and the internal 40-year dataset have not been put on the public record in detail for independent assessment. A $150 million commitment on public land assessed against summarised, unpublished data is not the standard the process demands.
Snowmaking is not free insurance
RNZ’s July 2026 analysis describes a two-speed industry, where large operators invest tens of millions in snowmaking while club fields cannot afford it and face increasingly variable seasons. Snowmaking is the resilience strategy, but it carries capital cost, ongoing water and energy bills, and hard temperature limits. The more the business model depends on manufactured snow, the more a 40-year concession needs to price those costs explicitly rather than wave at “technological intervention.”
The Ruapehu warning still stands
The cautionary tale is not hypothetical. When Ruapehu Alpine Lifts collapsed, Newsroom reported in October 2022 that Climate Change Commission member and Victoria University professor James Renwick warned business had treated climate as someone else’s problem: “Now the can is looking pretty battered.” He noted an industry viability study nearly two decades earlier had forecast North Island fields becoming marginal by 2050, adding: “I was a bit surprised to see this happening now; it’s only 2022.”
DOC is not acting as a roadblock here. Its February 2026 concessions release shows a department willing to back commercial activity on conservation land. Its information request is gap-filling, not opposition. The fast-track process was built to cut red tape on worthy projects, and this project may well be one. But the question of who bears the remediation cost if a $150 million ski area on public land becomes unviable in 30 years is precisely what should be answered before approval, not after. How NZSki answers it will set the template for every major alpine tourism investment that follows.
Sources
- Otago Daily Times: Resilience of skifield plan queried (2026-07-04)
- RNZ: The Remarkables one step closer to becoming the country’s largest ski area (2026-06-04)
- RNZ: Why the ski industry is betting big on the future (2026-07-26)
- DOC: NZ Ski concession application recommendations report (2023-09-01)
- DOC: New DOC concessions support regional economies (2026-02-12)
- Newsroom: Ruapehu troubles a tangible impact of climate change (2022-10-12)