OFS Director Heather A. Henriksen adds that labs and computing systems—areas in which the University is growing most rapidly—have also presented problems for the Medical School, which has seen a 8.9 percent reduction in emissions.

GRASSROOTS GREENING

Though the Business School has continued to finance seven to 10 substantial sustainability projects each year since 2005, the $11 billion decline in endowment value in the year ending June 30, 2009 has affected other schools’ plans for green infrastructure changes.

For example, the School of Design, which receives 41 percent of its revenue from the endowment, has had to dramatically cut back on planned renovations of Gund Hall—such as replacing the large windows in the studio area—after this year’s endowment payout declined by 8 percent from the previous year, Cahill says.

“It’s always interesting at Harvard to say this, but we’re one of the poorer schools,” Cahill says.

To facilitate sustainability projects with large up-front costs, OFS manages a Green Campus Loan Fund, which allows schools to borrow up to $500,000 for initiatives and upgrades that will generate net savings within five years. According to the OFS website, the fund has provided $11.5 million in loans for 153 projects—including lighting upgrades, improvements to heating and cooling systems, and composting programs.

“We’ve had pretty broad support from the schools and units using it,” Henriksen says.

OFS has also encouraged schools to roll out “occupant engagement” programs, where Green Teams comprised of staff and students promote environmentally friendly practices such as composting, recycling, and saving energy.

These grassroots efforts have contributed the most to the Law School’s reductions, according to Arciprete, who says that the school focused on behavior modification during the initial phases of their sustainability efforts due to high renovation costs.

At the Design School, Cahill says that 10 percent of the faculty and staff are members of the Green Team, which has encouraged composting and recycling of wood and other design materials, and Henriksen says that initiatives such as low flow fume hoods have been able to maximize efficiency in a typically energy-intensive environment at the science schools.

Simple steps such as running the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems only when buildings are heavily occupied have contributed to significant cost savings, Henriksen adds.

“This isn’t the sexy stuff, but they’re also the stuff that have the big impact,” Henriksen says.

THE MAGIC NUMBER

After evaluating Harvard’s GHG reduction efforts thus far, Henriksen says that OFS is reassessing the different divisions’ plans to create a University-wide master plan that will be released later this year, marking Faust’s efforts to bring together the University’s schools that have traditionally operated under the “every tub on its own bottom” philosophy of decentralization.

Though OFS assistant director Jaclyn Olsen says that the relative decentralization of green efforts provides room for innovation at the school level, the office would like to see more coordination among individual efforts across the University.