In July 2008, University President Drew G. Faust challenged Harvard to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from the 2006 baseline level within the next decade.

Since then, Harvard’s individual schools are making uneven progress towards the University’s target, with reductions ranging from a high of 27 percent at Harvard Business School to a low of 4.6 percent at the Graduate School of Design for fiscal years 2006 to 2009.

And as of July 2009, the University had reduced its emissions by 7 percent, including campus renovations and expansions.

At the center of a sprawling, decentralized University, the Office for Sustainability—established in the fall of 2008—has been tasked with keeping every Harvard division on track to meet the same 30 percent reduction in GHG emissions.

But given the unique starting point and varying operational needs of each school—Harvard Medical School’s energy expenditures include the electricity demands of its labs, where thousands of students and faculty conduct research, for example—it is unclear whether Harvard will be able to achieve 30 percent reductions across the board.

THE RAW MATERIALS

For the School of Design, meeting Faust’s challenge would require major renovations to its only building, Gund Hall,a 1970s Brutalist concrete building half occupied by a 35,000 square foot open studio space where the temperature varies by as much as 15 degrees between the bottom and top levels.

Gund Hall’s vast expanse of single-paned windows overlooking the large studio space is a major source of heat loss in the winter and overheating in the summer, the school’s facilities manager W. Kevin Cahill explains.

Additionally, the school has struggled to find an economically viable solution that would not ruin the architectural integrity of the building, says School of Design professor Christoph F. Reinhart, who has spearheaded many of the school’s sustainability efforts.

“This building was built before the oil embargoes, before the whole dynamic of heating costs,” Cahill says of Gund Halls’ energy-inefficient design. “They wouldn’t do that today.”

Similarly, Harvard Law School has run into difficulties in meeting its sustainability goals, as many buildings on campus were constructed in the 1950s, according to the school’s facilities director John Arciprete. The Law School has cut emissions by 14 percent thus far.

“The Business School would just have to change a setting on a pump to make it more efficient,” Arciprete says. “We would have to buy a whole new pump.”

The “growth inclusive” stipulation of the goal—meaning that any emissions associated with renovations or expansions must not push the school over its 30 percent targeted reduction—has proven to be another challenge for the Law School, which broke ground on a new construction project in 2007.

The Northwest Corner project, which is slated for completion by the end of 2011, will add about 250,000 square feet to the Law School’s campus—and a much larger real reduction goal in existing buildings, Arciprete says.

At the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, high-energy labs take up 25 percent of building space on Harvard’s Cambridge campus but account for half of FAS utilities costs, according to the Earth and Planetary Systems department website.