Green Hotel in Jackson Hole

Alpine House, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gets all of its energy from wind power plants. The Crowne Plaza Cabana in Palo Alto is California’s only solar-powered hotel. The Habitat Suites Hotel in Austin powers both its electricity and water with solar energy. And the luxe El Monte Sagrado in Taos, New Mexico can filter waste water into pure drinking water without harmful chlorination.

And finding green hotels is getting easier as booking engines are getting into the game. Last October, for example, the online hotel discounter Quikbook.com launched a filter to search for green hotels.

Green practices can be confusing to casual customers, though. The Vancouver Hilton, for example, brags about how its windows can open, helping fresh air circulate. But the Orchard Garden boasts the opposite: sealed windows that allow for total climate control. And while some features are very visible, such as the Vancouver Hilton’s alternative fueling stations for electric cars; others go unseen, such as the Orchard Garden’s fly-ash-in-concrete infrastructure.