But to complain, Hsu says, students need a better understanding of how Harvard works, and who is in charge.

The Inner Workings

Harvard’s energy management structure and ultitity use is complex, even to Associate Vice President for Facilities and Environmental Services Thomas E. Vautin, who oversees it.

“Harvard is a very decentralized place, even within the individual schools,” he explains.

Between its buildings, FAS—including libraries and atheletic facilities—accounts for more than half of the University’s total electricity, steam and chilled water consumption, according to Vautin.

Each school buys its energy from Engineering and Utilities, an office at Harvard that manages and distributes energy purchased from local utility companies.

By buying electricity instead of generating it itself, Harvard not only saves money through economies of scale, but also creates an incentive for each school to reduce its energy use.

Nevertheless, energy use at the University has increased by more than 17 percent since 1995, due mostly to an influx of computers and inefficient users, Vautin says.

Added to that increase is an estimated 52 percent jump in CO2 emissions since 1991, caused by the University’s use of more fossil fuel energy.

“Most people don’t think about what happens when they throw a light switch on,” Vautin says. “At the end of a long series of wires there’s a power plant consuming fossil fuel. They don’t recognize they’re having a small impact on air emissions. On the scale of Harvard all that impact really does add up.”

Working Together?

Last May, after meeting with concerned students, Dean of FAS Jeremy R. Knowles agreed to form an ad hoc energy task force to be led by longtime campus environmentalist Lawrence Professor of Engineering Fred H. Abernathy.

EAC Co-Chairs Hsu and Widland said that Knowles’ move was the first evidence in a long time that students and Faculty could work together to reduce energy use—a feeling reinforced by last month’s Undergradute Council resolution to form an official student-faculty energy committee.

“There is currently no established avenue within Harvard to address environmental issues, making institutional change in this area especially difficult,” the resolution read.

While the EAC receives funding for their activism efforts from Harvard’s Office of Physical Resources (OPR), Hsu, who sponsored the new council task force on conservation, says he hopes for more productive collaborations to bring change to the College.