IN NOVEMBER, while wildfires choked the skies and heavy rainfall caused flooding here in Massachusetts, local universities and medical institutions touted a sizable investment in renewable energy – halfway across the country. 

Harvard, MIT, Mass General Brigham, and nine other members formed the “Consortium for Climate Solutions” to develop solar and wind farms in Texas and North Dakota. Harvard hailed the effort as a key step toward their 2026 goal of fossil fuel neutrality and 2050 goal of fossil fuel independence. While these national investments in clean energy are worthwhile, they neglect a key problem these institutions have at home: Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals are powered by a fossil-fuel plant that is actively harming nearby Boston neighborhoods.

These institutions rely on a natural gas and oil plant called the Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP), one of the largest single sources of air pollution in the area.

Every year, MATEP produces 290,000 tons of carbon dioxide, almost 600 tons of nitrogen oxides, and large amounts of particulate matter. It runs all the time, providing a base load of power to the grid, and can ramp up for peak capacity during surges in energy demand.

Local air pollution is particularly concerning given MATEP’s location in the middle of the Longwood Medical Area, where patients come from around the world to receive specialized medical care. Longwood Medical Area also lies next to the Mission Hill, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods of Boston— all environmental justice populations. Thus, while the mission of these hospitals is to promote health and well-being, MATEP’s polluting emissions directly worsen the health of patients and nearby residents. 

Surrounding communities, already contending with higher burdens of chronic illness, breathe the impacts of these institutions’ choices daily. Research shows that air pollution increases the prevalence of asthma, COPD, heart attacks, strokes, and neurocognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It also increases rates of hospitalization and mortality from all causes. In Boston alone, over 300 people die every year due to air pollution.

Last year, an expert panel at Harvard’s own T.H. Chan School of Public Health underlined that low-income communities are the hardest hit by air pollution, likely due to those neighborhoods’ lower capacity to influence siting decisions. In continuing to work with MATEP, Harvard and its partner institutions are contributing to the very health inequities that their medical professionals research.

Institutions like Harvard and MIT argue that decarbonization is a stepwise process. This consortium, they claim, is only the beginning: first they will become carbon neutral, then they will become fossil fuel free. But the timing of this undertaking is unclear. Harvard’s contract with MATEP is slated to go through 2051, meaning Longwood area patients and Boston residents will endure several more decades of harmful emissions.

The Consortium for Climate Solutions must prioritize the concerns of its local community, especially given the easy steps it could take to reduce pollution from MATEP during its peaking hours. Clean energy alternatives like battery storage and renewable energy are already replacing peaker plants around the country, including in Massachusetts.

Most two-to-eight-hour duration batteries can replace a peaker plant, even in space-constrained urban areas like the Longwood Medical Area. One impressive example of these transitions is in New York City, where the New York Power Authority announced plans to replace its fleet of peaker plants entirely with batteries by 2035. Longer-duration storage technologies are also coming online and, when paired with demand response programs, can work together to not only alleviate the pollution burden of peaker plants like MATEP, but also secure health and wealth benefits for surrounding neighborhoods. 

Massachusetts has positioned itself as a climate leader in our country, and institutions like Harvard and MIT boast about their cutting-edge research and climate commitments. If the consortium wants to lead the charge against the climate crisis, change needs to start at home. They must plot a path toward fossil fuel-free, cleaner operations that respect the health of their own community.

Regina LaRocque is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mariel Tai Sander and Avi Cohen are second-year students at Harvard Medical School. Madeleine Kline is in the fifth year of a dual degree MD/PhD program at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

This represents the opinions of the authors and not the views of Harvard University.