This year, Harvard is reaching the conclusion of its ambitious climate goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016 from a 2006 baseline, and a Task Force will be convened to determine the University’s future vision and goals for tackling climate change.
This site is a tool for increasing the Harvard community’s understanding of how energy and emissions use has changed over time. We invite you to explore the site, find out the performance of each building, filter the comparison chart, see the impact of the whole campus, and comprehend the energy system.
Use the map to select a building and explore the greenhouse gas emissions and energy use over time. The type and the age of a building affect their performance. 98% of Harvard’s scope 1 and 2 emissions are associated with heating and electricity use in over 600 buildings across our multiple campuses.
Building name
| Type: |
| School (Level 2): |
| GSF (in sqft): |
| Floors: |
| Constructed Year: |
Although each building is a particular case and many factors influence the energy use and the GHG emissions, trends can be identified. Residential spaces account for nearly 33% of campus square footage and 23%of total energy use, while labs account for 20% of square footage but consume nearly 45% of energy use.
Explore the cumulative impact of each building type. More than 1,300 energy efficiency measures have been implemented across campus. As a result, university-wide energy consumption has dropped by 2%, even after accounting for 15% growth in square footage and energy-intensive space. Excluding growth, energy use has been reduced by 16%.
The average Massachusetts home creates 2.7 tons of CO2 emissions and uses 109 million Btu of energy per year.
The pictograms for each chart represent the number of homes that would create the maximum value for the given scale in a year.
The energy demand from the buildings across campus
is satisfied by energy that is generated on campus and energy coming
from the grid. 60% of emissions reductions are from actions taken on harvard's campus.
The remaining 40% is attributed to the regional electric grid becoming less carbon intensive.
The following are based on 2015 data.
We used data on GHG emissions and energy use from the Harvard Office for Sustainability. We would like to thank the Office for Sustainability for their collaboration and generous assistance during the preparation of the project. The shapefiles for the map are kindly given by the Harvard Planning and Project Management. You can find more details about the initiatives across Harvard community in the Sustainability Report.