OVERVIEW
What's new? 
Since 2000, the HGCI has estimated the University's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with an annual Greenhouse Gas Inventory. The Greenhouse Gas Inventory is an important tool that provides summary information about trends in Harvard's emissions and could provide the basis for a University-wide GHG reduction target.
HGCI recently completed the FY07 Greenhouse Gas Inventory. There have been several changes since FY06 in response to new developments and the emergence of best practices in the field of GHG measurement (specifically, the emergence of The Climate Registry as a national GHG registry). These changes are summarized below:
- Electricity is treated using a regional average emission factor, as opposed to a state-specific factor. This results in an overall lowering of emissions for all data years, because the New England grid is "cleaner" than the Massachusetts grid.
- RECs are shown as "adjusted emission reductions" as opposed to being deducted directly from the emissions total. This provides more transparency and is a policy-neutral treatment of RECs until a clear solution for assessing the GHG impact of RECs is available.
- The Longwood Campus, home to the Medical, Dental, and Public Health Schools, is not included in the FY07 analysis due to a lack of data from the Longwood Energy Plant.
- Emissions are expressed according to Scope 1 (direct on-site combustion) and Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased energy).
- New emission sources have been added to the inventory, including the Harvard fleet, refrigerant micro-releases, solid waste disposal, commuting, and air travel.
By using the navigation bar to the right, you can see inventories for the entire Cambridge/Allston campus, or for individual schools. On each page, you can download a summary PDF of that specific GHG inventory, or you can download the full GHG inventory (in Excel) to understand the calculations behind the results. Additionally, the documents below summarize the FY07 inventory process and results.
Results of the FY07 inventory: click here.
