E2 Member Heather Henriksen is the Director of the Harvard University Office for Sustainability. In this role she oversees a team of change agents that works across more than 12 Schools and dozens of administrative departments to set and achieve university-wide sustainability goals. Prior to joining Harvard, Heather was Director of Corporate Marketing & Business Development at Time Warner and served as an Assistant Director at Stanford University Law School. She holds a Master’s in Public Administration with a focus on energy and environment from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Earlier this month, we got a chance to talk to Heather about what’s going on at Harvard.
On the role of universities
We believe that one of the core missions of the higher education sector is to solve global challenges, which include climate change and environmental sustainability. Harvard President Drew Faust has called this "our accountability to the future." Universities should carry out research and teaching, but also use the campus as a "living lab"- a microcosm to pilot, test, and develop replicable models for environmental change. In this context, Harvard’s leaders have strongly, publicly, and consistently committed to maintaining an environment that enhances human health and fosters a transition toward sustainability.
On sharing best practices
While universities have done a great job communicating with each other, there is room to increase engagement with the business community and municipalities. Harvard’s leadership is committed to doing more to strengthen these partnerships.
We’ve initiated a partnership with MIT and the City of Cambridge, called the Community Compact for a Sustainable Future, to improve the health and well-being of the Cambridge community. It addresses nine key areas of collaboration, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate mitigation and preparedness, storm water management, and green tech incubation. So far we’ve recruited over 20 companies and NGOs in the city to join us in solving challenges together. We’ll kick off operations in the spring, but there is already terrific alignment on vision and goals; the challenge will be execution.
Another example: Harvard Executive Vice President Katie Lapp serves as Chair of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission’s Higher Education Working Group and our office staffs this initiative. The goal of the working group is to share best practices in higher education as they apply to implementation of the city’s Climate Action Plan. For example, later this month the working group will hold a symposium on laboratory efficiency to reduce GHG emissions, to which biotech, hospitals and healthcare companies in the Boston area will be invited.
On student engagement
Students have been the key driver for sustainability at Harvard, as has been the case in universities around the country. I recall a Princeton Review study that reported 62% of students will factor in campus sustainability when deciding between universities. Even if students are not directly focusing their studies in this area, they want to know that issues of climate change and sustainability are being addressed through research, teaching and on-campus operations.
Our sustainability plan
The Office for Sustainability was founded in 2008 by President Faust. It grows out of faculty and staff initiatives beginning in 2001. In 2004, the university adopted a set of sustainability principles aimed at creating a more sustainable, healthy campus, including energy reduction, organic landscaping, sustainable transportation, and certified green cleaning programs. Thanks to our President and Deans formal GHG reduction targets were set in 2008. Later this year we will adopt a university-wide sustainability plan, which sets clear goals and accountability on topics beyond GHG and energy.
On GHG targets and Net Zero
Our initial goal was a 30% reduction in GHG emissions by 2016 (inclusive of growth), off a 2006 base. From FY06 – FY13, we’ve achieved a 24% drop from the original baseline, or a 16% drop after taking into account the addition of 3 million square feet and energy intensity growth—chiefly from increased research needs in labs and high performance computing.
In the first stage, we focused on a host of measures to reduce energy use, including recommissioning, fuel switching, and installation of co-generation at our steam plant. We now have focus groups looking at a new set of strategies. In that context, we are exploring what Net Zero means for Cambridge and the region, rather than the university by itself.
Having addressed the low-hanging fruit, we recognize that the cost of future initiatives will go up and payback periods will get longer. As a university we have to carefully balance capital investments in energy efficiency against investments in research and education.
On unique challenges
We have a large historic building stock, and a considerable amount of research-intensive space. Labs and IT present the greatest demand for facilities expansion, and as research intensity increases so does energy use. Currently labs account for 23% of square footage but represent half of energy use.
Harvard has 26 million square feet of real estate involving 12 schools and multiple units. Each of the schools and units is required to report GHG emissions using the Climate Registry Operational Control Model, and to include energy and emissions impact in their five-year capital budgets. This decentralization provides us with detailed accounting of energy savings and emissions, and makes energy savings ‘top of mind’ with all the Deans for Finance. However, decentralization unquestionably comes with its own challenges, in particular unifying the schools and maintaining momentum for our initiatives in a challenging fiscal environment.
On Harvard’s green revolving fund
We have a $12 million "green revolving fund" that provides interest free "loans" to campus projects that can demonstrate appreciable resource use reductions while meeting a ROI standard. Since its inception five years ago, the GRF has supported nearly 200 projects that have yielded over $4 million in energy savings annually. Until last year, projects were capped at $500,000 and a 5-year payback. We’ve since increased the project caps ($1 million and an ~11-year payback), and now include a more complex and complete view of inputs including maintenance savings in the 20 year life cycle analysis that we do on all energy projects.
On delivering results
The Office for Sustainability is a convener. One of the keys to our success has been getting stakeholders at all levels around the campus to understand they have "skin in the game". They own the goals, want to incorporate them into their work, and are empowered to do so. We don’t micromanage and don’t tell specialists how to operate – in every office where we work, we engage each level of operations and staff around our intent, and collaborate with them to design an implementation plan that makes sense. And, we spend a lot of time getting feedback from stakeholders; in this regard, decentralization actually helps.
Harvard is a research institute. As such, we are constantly judging ourselves against the current best-in-class. It is part of our ethos to pilot and test things; universities are wonderful places to try new approaches and validate new technologies and models. We’ve so many tech entrepreneurs in the Boston area. We should explore creating a more formal process for entrepreneurs and companies to pilot new technologies at the University.