Tag: Energy

  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    The Lindbergh Foundation recently named Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Peter Girguis one its 14 Lindbergh Grant recipients for 2007. ProCor, a global communication program promoting heart health founded by Harvard School of Public Health Professor of Cardiology Emeritus Bernard Lown, has granted its first Louise Lown Heart Hero Award to the Heart…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Shell makes 5-year gift to fund Harvard energy policy research

    Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) is the recipient of a five-year $3.75 million donation from the Shell Exploration & Production Co., KSG Dean David T. Ellwood recently announced. The funds will be used to enhance and expand University research efforts on critical issues of energy policy.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nanowire makes own electricity

    Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Crimson with a touch of green

    When Drew Faust is inaugurated as Harvard’s 28th president this week, there will be more than a touch of green to go with the crimson.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    City board gives approval to Allston Science Complex plans

    Harvard University has received the approval from the Board of Directors of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), the city’s planning and economic development agency, for plans for the Harvard Allston Science Complex, the first new academic building of the University’s planned extended campus in Allston. Following completion of the zoning approval, construction can begin. Formal…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Digging for solutions to energy crisis

    In the 1970s, Iceland was one of the poorest countries in Europe. Today it is one of the richest, with a per capita GDP higher than that of Denmark, from which it won full independence in 1944.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard to limit greenhouse gas emissions in new Allston construction

    Harvard University this week reiterated its long-standing commitment to improving the environment, voluntarily agreeing to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new buildings constructed on its Allston campus in ways that…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Life classes’ teach local, global ways to go green

    In the offices of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI), there is everything you would expect from that arm of University Operations Services: no-glue carpeting, energy-efficient lighting, high-tech windows, and sensors that adjust ventilation by measuring CO2. But in plain sight, next to one of the recycled cubicles, there is also a toilet. The bowl…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Michelle Gray

    Michelle Gray, who has had careers as a cooking teacher and social worker, is a customer service manager at Harvard’s Dunster-Mather combined kitchen operation. One day not long ago, she used a handheld clicker to count the number of people she talked to. The answer: almost 300.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Meghan Duggan

    Meghan Duggan knows her way around sustainability. The marine engineer with a master’s degree in facilities management can talk easily about kilowatt hours, solar panels, cogeneration, renewable wood, and high-efficiency lights.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The biggest challenge of sustainability: Changing minds

    In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) made plans to move its offices to the Landmark Center, a converted Sears, Roebuck and Co. warehouse in Boston. Danny Beaudoin — the School’s manager of operations, energy, and utilities — was asked to look into sustainable design for the renovation: a realm of low-emitting paints,…

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ingenious use of indigenous tree reaps award

    The jatropha tree is a humble — some might even say homely — plant, with large, maple-like leaves and clusters of inedible fruit that, when mature, look too brown and shriveled to be of much use to anyone. But to thousands of rural eastern and southern Africans, the jatropha is a beautiful thing. It represents…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Green milestones

    1991: University Committee on the Environment established to encourage and coordinate University-wide environment-related activities and scholarship.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Conservation progress the fruit of many Harvard hands

    Seven years into the new millennium, Harvard has taken steps to lessen its impact on the environment. These are already bearing fruit, putting the University at the forefront of the national move to create environmentally friendly practices, buildings, and institutions.

    13 minutes
  • Nation & World

    French PM: Cooperation is the key

    French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the world now stands at a major crossroads, but that acting together the United States and Europe could lead the way in solving economic imbalances, ethnic and religious tensions, and the threat to the planet’s natural resources.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HRES approves 2007-08 Affiliated Housing rents

    Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) has announced the approval of the new rent schedule for approximately 2,800 Harvard-owned apartments rented by graduate students and other University affiliates. The new rents will take effect July 1, when the 2007-08 rental season begins.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Jackson raps abundance of ‘experts’

    In 1973, Shirley Ann Jackson became the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Decades – and 38 honorary degrees – later, Jackson is the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. Her resume includes time as a university researcher (in theoretical elementary particle physics);…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    World’s largest oil firm chief touts research to make fossil fuels ‘cleaner’

    The head of the world’s largest oil company said that renewable sources can’t meet the world’s growing energy needs so research dollars should be aimed at both developing renewable sources and at making fossil fuels cleaner.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Current U.S. renewable energy goal too low, says head of national lab

    The head of the U.S. government’s renewable energy lab said Monday (Feb. 5) that the federal government is doing “embarrassingly few things” to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation’s energy future.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Enel makes $5 million gift to Environmental Economics Program

    In recognition of the continued growth and influence exhibited by the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard University, Enel, a progressive Italian corporation involved in energy production worldwide, will make a gift of $5 million to establish The Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics. The gift was announced during a signing ceremony Tuesday (Feb. 6) at Harvard’s…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Renewable electricity effort receives Roy Award

    The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced that the 2007 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership will go to the Hybrid Systems for Rural Electrification in Africa (HSREA). The HSREA project provides reliable, renewable electricity to rural African villages through a system of solar panel technology combined with modified diesel motors running on pure…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard submits multi-decade master plan framework for Allston

    Harvard University today is filing a proposed Institutional Master Plan with the City of Boston detailing physical plans for an interdisciplinary campus in Allston. The Master Plan is a framework for the University’s future physical and academic growth and includes potential locations for new spaces for science, professional schools, arts and culture, and housing, as…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide

    An innovative solution for the man-made carbon dioxide fouling our skies could rest far beneath the surface of the ocean, say scientists at Harvard University. They’ve found that deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for this gas that has been a primary driver of global climate change in recent decades, and…

    3 minutes