Green Campus contest puts wind in energy's sails

The Harvard Green Campus Initiative is giving Harvard students and staff the chance to turn their energy conservation habits - or their new resolutions to conserve - into clean wind power.
The EmPOWER Harvard campaign seeks to get as many people as possible to sign an online pledge form before midnight Nov. 23 - the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Those buildings in which more than half their occupants pledge to conserve energy will win renewable energy certificates to offset 10 percent of the building's energy consumption, which includes the energy needed for the building's electricity, heating, and cooling.

Green Campus Initiative Director Leith Sharp said that conservation is a critical part of reducing Harvard's impact on the environment. It is only by both conserving and by switching to renewable sources where possible that the University will be able to reduce enough of its output of global warming carbon dioxide.

"This is the only way we are going to tackle climate change at Harvard in a financially viable way, by bringing those two together," Sharp said.