Harvard Real Estate Services

When you’re working away in your dorm or office trying to implement sustainability initiatives, it can often feel overwhelming.  It shouldn’t be that way, especially when there are so many impassioned students, staff and faculty throughout Harvard dedicated to making Green the new Crimson!

Visitors to the Harvard Faculty Club have high expectations for the amenities they will find there, including lighting. Meals should be accompanied by soft illumination. Function rooms should be amply lit for reading the program or a new acquaintance’s business card. Guest rooms should provide quality lighting for activities from reading to rouging.

Harvard Real Estate Services, in conjunction with Harvard Parking Services, has placed two 10 kW wind turbines atop the Soldiers Field Park Garage. After almost two years in planning stages, the structures were at last erected and set spinning on a bright day in September, 2009.

Harvard University has spent a considerable amount of effort developing its Green Building Standards, a set of building design standards for projects over 5 million dollars requiring the use of particular materials and power efficiency levels to ensure that all future construction projects meet certain sustainability benchmarks.

The University banded together during the August heat wave to significantly reduce energy consumption.

The Inn at Harvard has officially been approved as an ENERGY STAR building and is listed on the ENERGY STAR website. The ENERGY STAR label is a nationally recognized standard of excellence in energy performance. It signifies that a building is doing its part to fight global warming by using less energy than its peers.

In the spring of 2009, Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) installed solar thermal collectors at two of our residential properties - 472-474 Broadway and 20-20a Prescott Street. Heat collected by the panels is used to supplement the boilers in heating the buildings’ hot water.

At HRES we made it convenient for our staff to reduce waste by providing each person with a mug and a drinking glass. Our goal was to cut down on the number of disposable cups used for coffee and water, to both save money and to reduce waste. We purchased 150 mugs and 150 glasses, each of which are branded with the HRES logo, for $1128 in September 2007.

The Problem: peripheral devices, such as desktop computers, monitors, chargers and printers, that are plugged in to typical power strips draw “phantom power,” even when the devices are not in use. In a building with as many tenants as the Holyoke Center tower, this can quickly add up, both in terms of cost and energy usage.

Imagine a flat, black, south-facing roof the size of three football fields. What comes to mind? If you’re in a green mood, the answer is: “solar!”