The Winds of Change

The Undergraduate Council is poised to vote this Sunday on an important ballot initiative that may help to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases Harvard produces. If the proposal is passed, the council will place a referendum on next week’s presidential ballot which would ask students two questions: first, whether they support placing a $10 renewable energy fee on termbills and second, whether the charge should be “opt-in,” “opt-out,” or mandatory. We emphatically urge the council to pass the legislation, and we hope students will approve the fee on an “opt-out” basis.

Even most critics of the legislation agree on the seriousness of the problem of global climate change and the need to encourage energy conservation and increased efficiency. According to Harvard’s Environmental Action Committee (EAC)—which co-wrote the original proposal for the fee with the Harvard Students for Clean Energy—Harvard dorms currently use 17,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. The EAC estimates that each Harvard student contributes 3,340 lbs. of pollutants to the atmosphere each year. And according to a study conducted by the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, Harvard’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 40 percent over the past 12 years. While Harvard is by no means the leading polluter in the state of Massachusetts, there is no reason why the University cannot be a leader in a new wave of smarter, cleaner energy consumption.

The EAC claims that if each student were to contribute just $10 per year, a quarter of College dorms could be powered by wind, which is currently the most economically-feasible and technologically advanced form of renewable energy. And switching to wind power is easy—it’s not a matter of the University needing to build turbines. Harvard would simply purchase renewable energy certificates, which currently come at a slight premium compared to conventional sources of energy. Already, the School of Public Health receives half of its power from wind sources; meanwhile, the Kennedy School of Government is fully powered by wind.

We have no doubt that the vast majority of students would be willing to pay a little extra for the peace of mind of knowing that their own energy consumption would be cleaner.

A Faculty of Arts and Sciences Resource Efficiency Program survey conducted in 2003 found that 70 percent of undergraduates would support a $25 fee to switch to renewable energy sources. The proposed fee, which is considerably smaller, ought to at least be available to students who wish to pay it. Expansion of renewable energy technologies is one of the most important priorities of the next decade.

To be sure, we acknowledge that $10 is only the beginning. This project is only partly about raising money from students; it is also about encouraging the University to move more of its energy consumption in this direction. As the EAC points out, several other universities, including Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, among others, have already implemented successful green energy initiatives. By implementing an optional renewable energy fee, Harvard students can demonstrate to the central administration that environmentally friendly energy policy is an important student concern—one that students are willing to pay for and one that the University ought to be paying for as well. The EAC has vowed to lobby the administration to match student support for renewable energy and work to pursue future clean energy projects. This measure is in part a barometer for gauging interest—to demonstrate the depths of student support.

It is for that very important reason that we feel this fee should be optional—so as to provide the EAC with a mandate to sway the administration. But the question of whether to make the fee “opt-out” or “opt-in” is more complicated. The proposal’s backers called for an opt-out charge, arguing that an opt-in fee would under-represent students who support the initiative since only those students who noticed to check the box would do so. On the other hand, making the fee opt-out might exaggerate support—undermining the fee’s usefulness as a lobbying tool.

We must throw our support behind the opt-out side and urge voters to do so as well. Given that students must already opt-out of the student activities fee, and given that the Student Receivables Office has vowed to make the opt-out mechanism for online bills simpler and more straight-forward, the objections about coercing added support seem misplaced. If the issue is simply that too many students’ parents skip over the fine print, we think it better to err on the side of more support rather than less. The issue of climate control is simply too important; handicapping this initiative due to semantics would be a mistake.

A few naysayers have objected to the fee on other grounds altogether. They have worried that the renewable energy fee might make people less likely to pay the student activities fee, which funds the council’s budget. Others have stated reservations about opening the floodgates to all kinds of new fees for worthy initiatives. But we dismiss both concerns as unwarranted. We are confident that helping Harvard become a greener energy consumer is of unique and singular importance, and it is one that has nothing to do with student’s desires to fund the council. The student body must take action now, and the council must not stand in the way.