Green Baby Steps

This summer, solar panels were installed on the roof of Cabot Science Library, and plans are now emerging for wind turbines on the roof of William James Hall. These projects are the most recent—and possibly the most prominent—example of the warm embrace that Harvard and other progressive-minded colleges have given alternative energy, and they are a first step—albeit almost laughably small—toward the dream of locally produced renewable energy.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Director of Building and Operations Jay M. Phillips said that these first projects “are a way to generate some excitement, while offsetting some of the need to draw electricity off the grid.” If publicized correctly and actively, renewable energy projects such as these will hopefully have a much broader, twofold effect.

First, they will further galvanize student involvement in energy efficiency and green-technology innovation on campus, especially if the savings and rewards generated by such technologies are distributed to students. For instance, one might imagine students being rewarded with extra party grants or HoCo funds from the savings created by decreased energy expenditure.

Second, they will present Harvard students with evidence that renewable energy can be unobtrusive and practical. Turbines such as those that may be placed atop William James Hall would be silent—perhaps even aesthetic—everyday reminders that clean energy can come from close to home.

Harvard graduates are likely to have a future leading the world’s big businesses and imagining the next revolutions in political and scientific thought. If Harvard graduates can be made the early adopters of technologies that benefit the world’s environment, their prominence in society will surely help those technologies take hold more rapidly.

But until projects such as these get the publicity they deserve, their impact on the “greening” of students’ mindsets will be minimal.

I can remember feeling that things were tipping inexorably toward greenness this past January. If President George W. Bush could promise to tackle global warming in his State of the Union address, I figured, then any day now, the people who don’t care enough to turn off the lights when they leave a room—and there are too many—will take up environmentalism with vigor.

But my optimism broke on the rocks of realism. How can any fractional reduction in energy consumption or carbon dioxide (CO₂) output in a small region of well-off America make a noticeable difference while mammoth developing nations such as China and India go on a rampage of power plant-building and car-buying? Will the environmental blindness of the economic growth of these and other developing countries—not to mention continued energy-intensive expansion in America—nullify the effect of every green project for years to come?

According to data published by Princeton Professor Robert Socolow in Scientific American, seven billion tons of CO₂, the most important and abundant greenhouse gas, are emitted worldwide each year. At the current rate of emissions growth, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere will double pre-industrial levels by 2056—likely with catastrophic effects, the beginnings of which we may be seeing now in the form of polar ice caps that expand less every winter and thaw further every summer.

In light of these staggering figures, I asked myself how I could still be encouraged by the fact that Harvard has installed solar panels that generate 12 kilowatts of energy or that Harvard may install wind turbines that generate 29 kilowatts.

The approximately 250 metric tons of CO₂ emissions that would have resulted from generating the same amount of energy as these two renewable energy projects would pale by comparison to the more than 2.5 billion metric tons of CO₂ generated yearly at conventional American power plants.

“We’re not trying to pull anything over anybody,” said FAS Manager of Mechanical and Structural Maintenance Larry McNeil. “If these things could power whole buildings we would have installed them years ago.”

After all, if these two projects generate as much energy as predicted, they will provide one ten-millionth of the energy generated by fossil-fuel burning power plants in America—about enough energy to power the lights in the Cabot Science Library and in one floor of William James Hall. But I firmly believe that their impact will far exceed the miniscule dent they will put in America’s present polluting ways.

So whether or not Harvard reaches zero emissions, or the Undergraduate Council’s recommendation of 11 percent reduction by 2020, the most important impact of any green project will radiate from the campus in the form of a greener lifestyle embedded in the minds and hearts of graduates. But this will only happen if they are made fully aware of each project’s merits.

In lieu of federal policies encouraging massive investment in renewable energy—even an environmentalist like myself can’t dream that optimistically—the best way for colleges such as Harvard to ensure that America does its part to help rather than drastically hurt the global environment in the coming century is to ensure that every time you walk anywhere on campus, you see and appreciate that renewable energy can and does work reliably and unobtrusively. The solar panels on the Cabot Science Library and the planned wind turbines on William James Hall are a miniscule step in that direction. I hope that both projects will shatter the inertia, ignorance, and general apathy surrounding efficient, clean energy on campus.

Jonathan B. Steinman ’10, a Crimson sports editor, lives in Winthrop House.