Harvard, MIT, Mass General form renewable energy collaboration

Harvard announced on Wednesday the formation of the Consortium for Climate Solutions, a first-of-its-kind renewable energy collaboration of higher education, healthcare, and cultural institutions, as well as state and local government entities, led by Harvard, Mass General Brigham (MGB), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

The consortium will leverage its members’ collective purchasing power to overcome market conditions that serve as barriers to development of projects that advance cost-effective renewable energy and allow for larger-scale investment.

“Investing in new, large-scale renewables marks a significant step forward for Harvard in its commitment to a clean energy future,” said Meredith Weenick, executive vice president. “By founding the consortium with MIT and MGB, we are not only catalyzing the transition to a cleaner grid but also demonstrating a collaboration model that will enable a variety of nonprofit organizations and municipalities to work together to address the urgent challenges of climate change.”

The consortium recently finalized negotiations that will result in the development of 408 megawatts of new renewable energy through two large-scale, utility-grade projects — the Big Elm Solar in Bell County, Texas, and the Bowman Wind Project in Bowman County, North Dakota. The 200-megawatt Big Elm Solar project came online earlier this year, and the 208-megawatt Bowman Wind project is expected to come online in 2026. Collectively these projects will generate clean power equal to the electricity use of 130,000 U.S. homes annually.

“With these new utility-scale renewable electricity projects, Harvard will purchase the equivalent of 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, fulfilling a key component of our approach to meet our goal to be fossil fuel-neutral by 2026, while we simultaneously work on the longer-term effort to decarbonize our historic and urban campus,” explained Heather Henriksen, Harvard’s chief sustainability officer. 

Achieving fossil-fuel neutrality by 2026 is a bridging strategy to mitigate the negative impact of fossil fuels on emission levels and air pollution while the University develops longer-term technology and infrastructure changes to eliminate its use of fossil fuels by 2050. In addition to purchasing electricity from renewable sources, the University looks to seek greater energy efficiency and heat recovery on campus, replace fossil-fuel equipment at the end of life, increase its electric vehicle fleet, and find other reductions of fossil-fuel use.

“There is plenty of scientific evidence that fossil fuels are negatively impacting health, community stability, and ecosystems around the world. As Harvard continues on its path to become a fossil fuel-free campus, it is critical that the University not only conduct research on how to drive down global emissions and bolster adaptation, but to use our purchasing power to help produce cost-effective renewable energy solutions at scale,” said Mike Toffel, the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management at Harvard Business School, faculty chair of the Business and Environment Initiative at HBS, and co-chair of the Presidential Committee on Sustainability. “The consortium is an excellent example of engaging with the renewable electricity markets to expand their scale and impact.” 

The consortium founding members, Harvard, MGB, and MIT, sought opportunities to collaborate with smaller nonprofits and municipalities. This resulted in the partnership with PowerOptions, a nonprofit energy-buying organization, enabling the city of Cambridge, Beth Israel Lahey, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Tufts University, the Mass. Convention Center Authority, the Museum of Fine Arts, and WGBH to join under the PowerOptions umbrella. The consortium is providing PowerOptions members with access to affordable, large-scale renewable energy purchases that would typically be out of reach for individual buyers. 

The creation of the consortium, supported by Harvard’s leadership, was led by the Office for Sustainability working with faculty and other key stakeholders. The projects chosen for investment align with the recommendations and criteria set forth by the Fossil Fuel-Neutral by 2026 Subcommittee of the University’s Presidential Committee on Sustainability. The consortium vetted more than 100 potential projects, ultimately choosing the Big Elm Solar and Bowman Wind projects from developer Apex Clean Energy.

Locally, the consortium’s power-purchase agreements with the Big Elm and Bowman projects will enable its members to accelerate progress toward their individual sustainability goals consistent with local emissions-reduction regulatory targets, while simultaneously reducing fossil fuel emissions at a national scale. 

“The locations and scale of each project, in two of the most carbon-intensive electrical grid regions in the United States, mean that the potential positive impact is significant, creating a more robust and cleaner grid,” explained Henriksen.