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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
Green Campus contest puts wind in energy's sails
Energy pledge drive will back Sustainability Principles
Harvard News Office
The Harvard Green Campus Initiative is giving Harvard students and staff the chance to turn their energy conservation habits - or their new resolutions to conserve - into clean wind power.
The EmPOWER Harvard campaign seeks to get as many people as possible to sign an online pledge form before midnight Nov. 23 - the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
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Check out EmPOWER |
Those buildings in which more than half their occupants pledge to conserve energy will win renewable energy certificates to offset 10 percent of the building's energy consumption, which includes the energy needed for the building's electricity, heating, and cooling.
Green Campus Initiative Director Leith Sharp said that conservation is a critical part of reducing Harvard's impact on the environment. It is only by both conserving and by switching to renewable sources where possible that the University will be able to reduce enough of its output of global warming carbon dioxide.
"This is the only way we are going to tackle climate change at Harvard in a financially viable way, by bringing those two together," Sharp said.
The campaign builds on recent success in increasing Harvard's use of renewable energy. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the nonprofit Center for Resource Solutions recognized Harvard last month with a 2005 Green Power Leadership Award for being a leader in renewable energy use among higher education.
EmPOWER Harvard is a way to bring the campus Sustainability Principles, announced last year, to life broadly across campus, Sharp said. Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers last spring announced the creation of a fund to promote the use of renewable energy, of which $30,000 will go to support the campaign, Sharp said.
The campaign will be effective across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and for dormitories at the Business School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
EmPOWER Harvard will replace the Go Cold Turkey campaign that ran for the past few years, asking staff and students to pledge to conserve energy in their buildings by shutting off lights and computers and turning down thermostats. Through Go Cold Turkey 15 buildings won renewable energy certificates in 2004, resulting in the University purchasing 1.5 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy.
EmPOWER Harvard provides participants with a variety of options on how to conserve, with a checklist of 10 pledges including things like switching off computers and lights, biking to work, buying environmentally preferred products, and shutting off laboratory fume hoods when not in use.
The winners' wind power will be purchased from Sterling Planet, an energy company specializing in renewable energy, with the power generated by a wind farm in Minnesota, Sharp said.
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