Spring 2007, Volume 10 Newsletter:
The Harvard Green Campus Initiative, Growing, Growing, Grown!
In early 2000, President Rudenstine provided the seed funding for what would become the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI). With Rudenstine's support, I was recruited to Harvard from Australia by HGCI Co-Chairs Professor Jack Spengler and Tom Vautin to establish and direct a joint academic and administrative University-wide initiative. We had just $70,000 and one year to get things moving.
Within three months of arriving, I had developed a strategic plan for achieving wide-scale transformation across Harvard’s decentralized campus with the end goal of putting campus sustainability firmly on the University’s agenda . The heart of this strategic plan was the creation of an interfaculty initiative, called the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, consisting of 20 full-time professional staff working with all of Harvard’s schools and departments to implement hundreds of campus projects each year. The strategic plan also set a course for establishing a revolving loan fund of $12-15 million for financing campus projects with adequate paybacks.
In the year 2000, the purpose of the HGCI was the same as it is today. The HGCI:
• Creates and maintains an enormous web of relationship across Harvard, actively engaging and coordinating a critical mass of people in conversations and partnerships that continue to lead to new ideas, new priorities and new kinds of engagement.
• Provides the human resources, expertise, business models, education, training, financial incentives and case studies to overcome all existing barriers to wide scale operational change.
• Implements hundreds of successful green campus projects each year , building the confidence and commitment of hundreds of campus operations staff as well as fostering new attitudes and behaviors in thousands of students, staff and faculty alike.
• Ensures continuous improvement by encouraging Harvard to continue on its journey towards innovation and systemic transformation.
In 2000 there was little if any effort underway to address campus sustainability beyond Harvard’s regulatory compliance efforts and waste recycling program. Campus sustainability simply had not emerged as a priority. In late 2001 President Rudenstine and Provost Harvey Fineberg made a critical step towards a sustainable Harvard by approving HGCI for five years of core funding at $150,000 per year and establishing a $3 million revolving loan fund. With this basic support, we were able to begin to build the HGCI to the scale outlined in its strategic plan.
The next challenge was to create the HGCI without the assistance of grants, donations or further central administration funds. Efforts to attract financial support from these arenas had systematically failed. In the end, the HGCI was built by producing financial savings that exceeded its own staff costs. As the financial case was made for new projects, staff were recruited to implement energy audits, assist with green building projects, and run behavioral change programs that had excellent paybacks. Over time schools and departments expanded their investment in the services offered by the HGCI because of the attractive financial model and the quality of the services provided. Using this business model the HGCI has achieved an average annual growth rate of 70% for the last 7 years.
In 2004, President Summers was so impressed with the performance of the Green Campus Loan Fund that he doubled it to $6 million and then to $12 million in 2006. The central administration of the University also became convinced of the value of the HGCI and increased its core funding contribution. Core funding supports base program functions, which are those that are essential to Harvard’s sustainability efforts but which cannot be charged out on a fee-for-service basis. Examples include the production of this newsletter, the development of Harvard’s greenhouse gas inventory and other indicators, creation of Harvard’s green building guidelines and Allston sustainability guidelines, communication of Harvard’s work to the outside world, campus-wide strategic efforts, and more.
This year, the HGCI has achieved complete implementation of the Strategic Plan. We now employ 19 full time professional staff, 38 part-time student employees and manage a revolving loan fund of $12 million. HGCI saves Harvard over $6 million a year and has avoided 80 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Sustainable Endowments Institute, which ranked 115 US Colleges in its “College Sustainability Report Card” report, gave Harvard the highest rating of A-, noting that “Harvard University has one of the most comprehensive green campus programs in the country.” But in truth we have only just begun. We are at the end of the beginning. What we must do now is leverage every success, every lesson and every partnership to date in order to increase efforts across Harvard, raising our shared commitment to the next level. With our new President we are likely to have unprecedented leadership support for this next level of action.
To make the most of this new top-level support, Harvard’s greatest asset in will be the enormous number of people who have found given voice to their own convictions that Harvard become a global model of campus sustainability. The role of the HGCI will remain important as we strive to support the shared vision of this ever growing web of relationships and partnerships that have taken root across this complex and decentralized organization. The HGCI must continue to evolve and provide whatever services and advocacy activities necessary to empower people at every level and in every domain of the University. Our future as an organization will unfold as it has in past, by listening very carefully to what people need and want and by removing any obstacles that block their efforts.