And several Harvard professors—such as Kennedy School professor John P. Holdren, now President Barack Obama’s science advisor—have already been recruited to shape American energy policy.

“What we actually do on our campus has just a small impact,” says environmental science and engineering professor Daniel P. Schrag, who is also the director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. “The real impact we have is our impact on our students, who go on to become leaders in businesses and government.”

DIFFERENT PRISMS

Ultimately, Harvard’s campus sustainability efforts will serve more as a symbolic declaration of the University’s commitment than as a practical contribution in addressing climate change, Schrag says.

But he adds that critics of Harvard’s sustainability efforts acknowledge that Harvard must back up its dedication to environmental research and policy with action on campus.

“It’s exactly what Harvard should do because we should be leading people through practice,” Schrag says.

Harvard’s central Office for Sustainability—created in 2008 to coordinate campus sustainability efforts—has been tasked with helping each school meet Faust’s 30 percent goal, but the schools’ individual needs and resources limitations have resulted in varying degrees of progress.

“The Business School would just have to change a setting on a pump to make it more efficient,” Law School’s facilities management director John Arciprete says regarding the difficulties of greening the 1950s-era Law School buildings. “We would have to buy a whole new pump.”

For FAS, the addition of five new buildings since 2006, which included energy-intensive lab space, account for half its utilities costs and increased its greenhouse gas emissions by one percent, according to FAS Director of Operations Jay M. Phillips.

And diverging financial constraints at each school limit green renovation or costly sustainability efforts.

For example, the Graduate School of Design, which receives 41 percent of its revenue from endowment income, has had to dramatically cut back on planned renovations—such as replacing the large windows in the studio area of Gund Hall—after this year’s endowment payout declined by 8 percent from the previous year, according to W. Kevin Cahill, the school’s facilities manager.

“We’re realizing you don’t try to squeeze everybody through the same prism,” says Harvard Business School Professor Robert Steven Kaplan, who chairs the Office for Sustainability’s executive committee. “Everybody had to get sensitized to what can and can’t get done.”

Despite the challenges some of the schools currently face, OFS Director Heather A. Henriksen says she remains confident that the University will reach its 30 percent reduction goal by 2016.

But the larger question is not whether the University will meet its 2016 target levels of greenhouse gas emissions, but whether Harvard will be able to continue to push sustainability as a global priority and lead by example.

OFS’ own approach to targeting a 30 percent reduction in emission levels can serve as a model for other schools and businesses, Kaplan says.

“It’s an aggressive goal that we may not meet, but it’s wonderful to try,” Schrag says.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.