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Harvard's Leith Sharp: 'You can green your campus'StaffAugust 1, 2006Building Design and Construction
In 1998, Leith Sharp was named Young Australian of the Year, New South Wales Environment Category, for her work in establishing the Environmental Management Program at the University of New South Wales. Two years later, she established the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, which encompasses 600 buildings and 21 million gsf of floor space. Sharp holds a bachelor's in environmental science from UNSW and a master of education in human development and psychology from Harvard. She also co-instructs the Harvard Extension School course on sustainability. BD&C: How widespread is the “greening the campus” movement? Leith Sharp: Less than 10% of campuses around the country have formalized a commitment to sustainability, but many are recruiting full-time sustainability directors. A number of them have been looking for six to 12 months. BD&C: Why can't they find qualified people? LS: The role of sustainability director is to catalyze organizational change and shift the culture of an organization. You need to have a multidisciplinary background, organizational change skills, communication skills, technical skills, and some experience in a university setting. It takes a certain kind of strategic mindset. BD&C: You have to be a change agent, don't you? LS: That's the ideal. It requires forming strong relationships with key people very early, and engaging them in a transformative conversation over a long time. BD&C: What did you learn when you came to Harvard? LS: One [thing] that took me a year or two to get was that the majority of people at Harvard feel that Harvard should not only be doing well, but that it should be doing good. That's the key asset that we've had on our side. We found many key people who wanted to learn about their role in global warming and other issues, because they have this underlying receptivity that this institution must take responsibility. It sits within the hearts and mind of all the staff, students, and faculty. It's almost a private conviction. That's been a real eye-opener for me. The second thing is that Harvard will not invest money that doesn't show quantitative return on investment. The success of our initiative has been that you can only get money from this organization if you build a very convincing business case. It's a discipline that I have never had to work so hard at until coming to this organization. Getting to a point where you would have a climate-neutral campus, this is about decades of work and continuous improvement. You're engaging thousands of individuals across the university—12,000 administrative staff, 6,500 undergrads, 12,500 grad students, 2,500 faculty on campus, and thousands of others. BD&C: How has the HGCI filtered down to the students? LS: We employ 40 students four hours a week each to engage the 10,000 students who live in our residential facilities in understanding the environmental impact of living there. It's a really powerful form of education: educating around their behaviors, creating attitudinal shifts. We've seen a 15% reduction in energy use, and many students comment that when they go out into the workforce and find that their employers are wasting energy or not recycling, they're profoundly affected by it. BD&C: What advice would you give others who want to green their campuses? LS: The most important thing at the early stages is to get dedicated human resources, someone who has time to join the dots. Then the really pivotal thing is using peer-to-peer forums. Instead of us telling a group of facility managers what to do, we go in and ask them to explore new ways of doing what they do. Peer-to-peer is the best way to build large-scale innovation in any group. An effective change agent isn't the person with all the answers, it's the person who understands the fabric of relationships and how to bring them together in effective ways that transform the way people think and behave. An effective change agent has a vision, never loses hope, and persistently invests in building the intentions and capacities of others to take effective action. BD&C: What else would you advise? LS: Tackle the blatant financial barriers—capital budget, utility budget, and operating budget—so that you can justify capital expenditures that justify savings. One way to do this is through revolving loan funds [the HGCI loan fund has invested $7.5 million in 105 projects, with an average ROI of 34% and a payback of less than four years]. Also, life cycle costing as a methodology is essential. Lastly, use LEED, Green Seal, Energy Star, and other established accountability measures in your program. The key value is not in the bricks, but what it does to the capacities of people to do the next building. The institution needs to invest in continuous improvement and organizational learning across the board. Every project should set us up to do better in the next project. We have to truly achieve continuous improvement, driving a frontier of innovation that never stops moving forward. © 2008, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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