What is the HGCI?

Focus

The mission of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) is to make Harvard University a living laboratory and learning organization for the pursuit of campus sustainability. The business model of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI) is fundamentally entrepreneurial in its approach as it continuously develops and sells new services to schools and departments that want to both save money and reduce their environmental impacts. Today the HGCI is a service organization consisting of 19 professional staff and 40 part-time students that have been trained and managed to work on building upgrades, building construction and design, behavioral change, procurement practice, renewable energy, staff training, waste reduction, ongoing environmental education, recycling and more.

Harvard Green Campus Initiative: A Mission Driven, Business Based Model for Campus Sustainability

The Harvard Green Campus Initiative began in the year 2000 with a one year grant from the Office of the Provost. This grant was used to employ Harvard’s first full time campus sustainability professional with a dual academic and administrative reporting requirement.

Environmental sustainability is a moving target that requires a rapid and wide reaching escalation in the pace of organizational change across every university. At its heart, the challenge posed by the environmental imperative is an organizational change challenge. We must increase the rate at which our universities are able to innovate in the ways they operate. And this increase in the rate of innovation must be both sustained and successfully leveraged to ensure an optimal rate of continuous improvement. The limits of time, money, politics and complexity must be thoroughly understood and skillfully worked with. This is why it is essential to have a service organization within the university that can provide the kind of services that the Harvard Green Campus Initiative has developed.

Engagement

The HGCI team works across a population of over 40,000 individuals in 600 buildings to ensure continuous improvement in campus design and operations in support of campus sustainability. We are working with a particular focus on reducing Harvard University’s greenhouse gas emissions which, like most large research universities, have been increasing at a steady rate of around 4% per year since 1990. In the last 2 years a number of schools at Harvard University have finally started to reverse this upward trend and are now reducing their emissions each year.

Approach

With a partnership focused, responsive and strategic style of engagement, we have ensured that each and every one of our programs and services proves its worth financially, organizationally and environmentally.

At Harvard University we approach every Department and every Faculty as a unique partner, with unique interests and opportunities concerning campus sustainability. Over the years the HGCI has established a full range of programs, services, incentives and course.

Impact

What follows is a list of many of the activities underway across Harvard schools and departments in partnership with the HGCI:

  • As of June 2007 Harvard has 20 LEED registered building projects both new construction and renovation projects. Many green building projects have achieved energy performances of 30-50% above code and construction waste recycling rates of over 90%.
  • Graduate Green Living programs implemented to outreach to over 9,000 undergraduate and graduate residential students. As a result recycling rates have increased by over 40% and energy use has been reduced by 10-15%. Resource Efficiency Program or Graduate Green Living Program
  • Addressing energy conservation in existing buildings with the Green Campus Loan Fund.
  • Purchasing renewable energy certificates to offset 7% of Harvard’s electricity consumption while investing another $100,000 a year into renewable energy research and internal business development for an expanded renewable energy portfolio. Renewable Energy
  • Building energy assessments to identify and implement building upgrades. Recent building energy upgrades have achieved energy use reductions of 30%.
  • Staff training to build capacities for high performance building operations. Improved performance of staff have produced an instant payback.
  • Research support to identify, trial and implement new practices including:
    • campus wide green cleaning service now offered at Harvard University
    • biodiesel is now used in all Harvard owned buses,
    • trial of kitchen oil to make biodiesel and/or use directly to fuel recycling truck
    • new air quality controls being trialed on construction machinery
    • large scale indoor environmental quality and productivity study underway to determine building design impacts on productivity at Harvard University.
  • Waste Management and Recycling Service achieving 45% recycling rate
  • Commuter Choice Program subsidizes public transport and improves bicycle facilities
  • Ongoing expansion of local & organic produce in Harvard University Dining Service. 

 

All efforts are escalating as the Harvard community gets behind the Campus-wide Sustainability Principles approved by President Summers in 2004. Efforts are also under way to fully integrate sustainability into the largest planning effort of Harvard University’s 370 year life, the development of 250 acres into a new Harvard campus in Allston.

With the continued efforts of the HGCI and all of its partners, Harvard University will succeed in meeting the enormous challenge of becoming a global model of campus environmental sustainability, dramatically enhancing its local, national and international reputation. And all of this will be achieved with a business oriented, entrepreneurial spirit that will prove to the world that environmental sustainability is not just the right thing or the smartest thing to do, it’s also the financially viable, business minded thing to do.

Learn More…

After exploring our website you will understand just how much creatively, engagement and hard work it takes to achieve these kinds of outcomes! We also hope that you will become as inspired as we are to be a part of a world wide effort to enable the University Sector to reach its full potential as a world leader in the practice of institutional environmental sustainability.