Dedicated to advancing sustainable laboratories globally.
A1 System Optimization | Designing for High-Performing Lab Systems
Less Energy, More Discovery: Designing for Performance and Flexibility
Designing viable, cost-effective strategies to reduce the environmental impact of complex laboratory buildings is essential to lowering the carbon footprint of the built environment. Drawing on a deep understanding of the evolution of research facilities, this presentation will showcase a range of proven approaches used in recent lab and research projects to advance energy efficiency efforts. Using the Kansas University Medical Center Cancer Center as a case study, the session will explore how the design, planning, and client teams collaborated to implement integrated design and engineering solutions, including risk-based zoning, a flexible 10-foot planning grid, solar shading strategies, and innovative HVAC systems. The team will discuss the challenges encountered throughout the design process, the solutions developed to overcome them, and the lessons learned along the way. Expected energy performance outcomes and associated cost savings will also be highlighted, demonstrating how thoughtful planning and coordinated execution can meaningfully reduce both operational carbon and long-term expenditures.
Designing for Reality: Practical Lessons From High-Performance Laboratory Buildings
High-performance lab buildings require a thoughtful balance between sustainability, reliability, and day-to-day operations. Energy targets and advanced systems often shape early design decisions, but experience shows that added complexity, tight environmental tolerances, and shifting research needs can create challenges that last well beyond occupancy. Drawing from a range of academic and research facilities—including BSL spaces, dense chemistry labs, and critical research environments—this session shares practical lessons related to HVAC systems, pressurization, process cooling, vibration, and infrastructure planning. Instead of focusing on a single project, the presentation highlights patterns that tend to repeat: matching system complexity to an owner's capacity, designing with maintenance and reliability in mind, coordinating space and structural needs early, and allowing room for future change. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to support sustainability goals while improving long-term performance and operational stability.
High Performance Beyond Code: Electrification and Integrated Design at JHU Applied Physics Laboratory Building 28
Large, high-intensity laboratory facilities face energy constraints driven by process and unregulated loads. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Building 28, a 400,000-square-foot science and technology facility with a 3-megawatt data center, demonstrates how integrated performance analysis and system innovation can deliver measurable results beyond code. With 68 percent of the building classified as unregulated load, building performance analysis informed decisions from early massing through construction. Evaluation of four massing options and three envelope assemblies improved roof and wall U-values, lowering peak loads and enabling right-sized mechanical systems. Daylighting modeling and controls reduced lighting energy by 39 percent. Mechanical systems decouple sensible and latent loads through a split temperature hydronic strategy. High-efficiency chillers operate at elevated temperatures for sensible-only coils, while a dedicated cold loop manages dehumidification. Four pipe fan-powered boxes, chilled beams, and DOAS units with total enthalpy heat recovery achieving 60 to 70 percent effectiveness reduce HVAC, ventilation, and fan energy. Full electrification, including electric boilers, eliminates onsite combustion. Compared to baseline modeling, the project achieved 22 percent total energy savings and a 47 percent reduction in regulated loads, securing a two-year payback and a $1 million utility incentive.
A2 Sustainable Design | Case Studies in Local Lab Repurposing
The Adaptive Edge: Reimagining Underutilized Retail and Office Space as Labs
The session explores the transformation of two distinct buildings into high-performance life science hubs, navigating the constraints of existing floor-to-floor heights, rigorous energy code improvements, and sustainability goals. The 20 CambridgeSide project, at the edge of Kendall Square, reimagined an existing three-story Macy's anchor store into a 10-story office/lab project with commercial use on the ground floor. The presentation will detail the complex weaving of a new structure into an existing one and optimization of the building envelope. Design studies prioritized right-sizing solar shading and thermal performance to achieve LEED Platinum. The second project transformed a 1931 seven-story Art Deco industrial building that has been reimagined as Watertown Exploratory Labs (WELL), a 491,035-square-foot, LEED Gold-certified life sciences campus that combines historic character with forward-looking innovation. By retaining the historic patina, adding a four-level addition, and integrating state-of-the-art systems, the design supports multi-tenant research, diagnostics, and GMP manufacturing. The design highlights the importance of social space and opportunities for interaction between the tenants in the extensive and vibrant seating spaces on the ground floor. The speaker will share details of the comprehensive transformation, including HVAC upgrades, high-performance envelope updates, water savings, and PV systems.
​Upcycling an Existing Building for High-Performance Labs
As the demand for advanced research facilities grows, the need for environmentally responsible and innovative design becomes paramount. Harvard University's new Goel Quantum Science and Engineering Building sets a new standard in existing building retrofits for high-performance laboratory design. By taking advantage of existing building stock, institutions can make strides in reducing their carbon footprint while developing cutting-edge research facilities. The Goel Quantum Science and Engineering Building is a retrofit of an existing 2004 LEED certified building. The project includes the renovation of approximately 60,000 square feet in the 94,000-square-foot building to house the Harvard Quantum Initiative (HQI) and the Rowland Institute. Central to the mission of the HQI and the Rowland Institute is promoting innovative research and practices within its community of scientists and academics. To that end, their new home is designed to meet the highest sustainable building certification, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) Core Green Building and Materials Petal certifications. This session, through a case study of the Goel Quantum Science and Engineering Building project, will showcase how existing building renovations for research space can prioritize energy efficiency, lowered embodied carbon, and occupant wellbeing. Through the lens of the LBC, speakers will explore the innovative design strategies employed to maximize the potential for this existing building.
Moving on Up: How to Leverage Lab Suites in High-Rise Buildings and Beyond
As companies with synthetic chemistry functions look to scale up and expand, they must take into consideration their high production of flammable liquids when selecting a new site. Lower floors, typically one to two stories above grade, have been the obvious choice to place chemistry functions. These floors allow for significantly more chemical quantities than higher floors in a building, particularly for flammable liquids. Now in Massachusetts, there are other options available than just control areas or high hazard occupancies. The adoption of the 10th edition of 780 CMR introduced the lab suite method, which allows an increase in allowable chemical quantities, especially on upper floors, where previously the allowed quantities had been very limited. While the adoption of 10th edition was taking place, the Boston lab bubble was bursting and some lab buildings were (and still are) vacant. While there is no single solution to this problem, lab suites present an opportunity to bring tenants into buildings they previously would not have considered. This presentation will look at a case study in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that leveraged the power of lab suites to consolidate multiple sites into an existing lab/office high-rise building. Speakers will explore how and why the lab suite approach can be inherently more sustainable than tried-and-true solutions used prior to the introduction of lab suites.
A3 Decarbonization | Campus and Community Planning for Decarbonization
Decarbonization Policy for a Global Biotech Hub - Cambridge's BEUDO
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The Multi-Layered Policy Landscape: We could do a comparison of state and city specific policies to understand how regional alignment impacts portfolio management for developers and stakeholders in the area. **This would depend on any commitment that Boston may have made to present on this topic at this conference.
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Deconstructing BEUDO: Requirements and Flexibility: A deep dive into the 2023 BEUDO amendments to look at, at time of writing, one of the most ambitious mandates in the U.S. This would cover standard emission reduction trajectories as well as Flexibility Mechanisms like Renewable Energy purchases, Verified Carbon Credits (VCCs), campus-wide reporting options, and hardship and deferral plans.
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The Biotech Impact: ESG, Emissions, and Case Studies: The final section can address the implications for Cambridge's life science cluster. Laboratory environments consume 3x to 5x more energy than standard offices, and many tenants in these buildings are bound by corporate ESG targets that align with or even precede BEUDO's timeline. Estimated Impact: We could provide analysis of projected carbon reductions across the Kendall Square and Alewife markets, as well as the universities. Case Studies: If appropriate, a spotlight on high-performance retrofits and new builds in Cambridge for properties covered by BEUDO
Total Carbon Benchmarking: A Data-Driven Study in New Build Versus Adaptive Reuse
Laboratory buildings are among the most carbon-intensive typologies in the built environment. Yet, despite a growing emphasis on decarbonization, few studies have quantified the total carbon impact (embodied + operational) of lab buildings over time, and even fewer have compared adaptive reuse to new construction. This presentation introduces a new study that analyzes the total carbon footprint of two life science laboratory projects in Massachusetts: one a renovation of a 100-year-old former Navy building in Boston's Seaport district, the other a new ground-up facility in Cambridge's Kendall Square. Using tools such as eQuest, Tally, EC3, and EPIC, the study models 60-year operational and embodied carbon impacts and benchmarks them against regional and national datasets (ENERGY STAR, BERDO/BEUDO, CLF, AIA 2030). The findings will reveal the carbon trade-offs between reuse and new construction, offering a data-driven framework for early design decision-making impacting Smart Lab programming. Attendees will gain insight into how total carbon can be used as a design metric, how to structure a benchmarking study, and how to communicate carbon outcomes to clients. This session is ideal for lab planners, engineers, and sustainability professionals seeking to move beyond intuition and toward evidence-based decarbonization strategies for high-performance lab environments.
Decarbonizing Yale's Science Hill With a District-Scale Blueprint for Research Modernization
Yale University's Science Hill READY (Resilient, Efficient, and Decarbonized Yale) creates a unified roadmap to prepare one of the university's most research-intensive districts for a zero carbon future. Across five legacy lab buildings, fragmented systems, inconsistent ventilation, and decades-old workflows pose challenges to decarbonization. READY transitions these buildings from steam to low-temperature hot water, enabling connection to a new, electrified thermal plant and supporting Yale's 2050 zero carbon goal. A 16-month investigation produced digital twins, updated lab classifications, ventilation risk and effectiveness testing, fume hood retrofits, and energy roadmaps showing up to 30 percent savings. Central to the program is a new Laboratory Ventilation Level standard and EHS chemical inventory program, providing a research-aligned basis of design that right-sizes ventilation, improves safety, and reduces energy-intensive infrastructure. READY brings together Facilities, Energy Management, EHS, space planning, and academic partners to align modernization and decarbonization. Using data-driven analyses of lab activity, ventilation demand, and utility dependencies, the project identifies coordinated district scale strategies, real-time ventilation management, and safer research operations. This presentation outlines READY's methods and insights, offering a replicable model for institutions modernizing research districts while advancing sustainability and resilience.
A4 Sustainable Science | Green Labs in Action
Green Labs in Action: Delivering Ireland's First Institution-Wide My Green Lab Accreditation
Royal College of Surgeons in the Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences became the first university in Ireland to achieve My Green Lab accreditation across all teaching and research laboratories. The initiative evolved from individual sustainability projects to a coordinated, institution-wide framework embedded within lab governance and daily operations. This presentation outlines the strategic model adopted, including collaboration across academic, technical, estates, procurement, sustainability teams, and student partners; alignment with institutional climate action objectives and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; and integration of measurable environmental standards into operational workflows. Practical challenges and lessons learned will be discussed. A central feature was structured student partnership. Through the RCSI Student Engagement and Partnership program, students collaborated in sustainability audits, behavioral change campaigns, data collection, and awareness initiatives. This strengthened engagement, improved compliance, and accelerated culture change across lab environments. Outcomes include measurable waste reduction and segregation, sustainable procurement practices, increased energy awareness, and sustained cultural transformation within regulated health science laboratories. Attendees will gain a transferable roadmap for scaling My Green Lab accreditation while embedding authentic partnership to achieve lasting impact.
Student Sustainability Showcase: Decarbonizing Process Steam at Stanford
While campus demand for process steam is small in comparison to other utilities, emissions from steam generation constitute 40 percent of Stanford University’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions. To decarbonize this resource, Stanford launched a two-pronged approach to address immediate efficiency gains while planning for long-term electrification. They developed a granular accounting method that matches building-level meter data with individual equipment operating schedules, revealing significant discrepancies between expected and actual consumption. This data-driven approach identified inefficiencies invisible to traditional facility management practices. To prevent recurrence, they are implementing automated analytics to flag abnormal consumption patterns, enabling rapid reactive repairs to complement preventative maintenance. Long-term, they are systematically cataloging steam-dependent equipment and evaluating electrification alternatives that maintain research capabilities while also decreasing maintenance costs and resource usage.
Findings from this work reveal the importance of granular consumption data, the prevalence of steam losses versus end-use consumption, and the promise of automated monitoring systems for sustaining efficiency. This integrated approach targets a 40% reduction in university Scope 1 and 2 emissions while demonstrating a replicable framework for institutions balancing decarbonization goals with operational research support.
Sustainable Lab Infrastructure Development at Duke Kunshan: A Model of Rooted Globalism
Given the surging awareness of climate change, higher education institutions have been moving towards green infrastructure development. On one hand, it contributes to better management and planning of lab infrastructure and equipment; on the other hand, it provides a role model for fostering well-informed citizens well-equipped to tackle global challenges. As a liberal arts and sciences university located in China with students from over 70 different countries, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) has the characteristics of being coherent in establishing regulations across units; agile in adjusting based on tailored needs; and constrained, given multiple dimensions of compliance requirements. The presentation will use DKU as an example to discuss how small higher education institutions with limited resources can effectively integrate green concepts into the daily operation of academic labs from regulatory, knowledge sharing and education perspectives. The speaker will introduce ongoing efforts to use the I2SL Lab Benchmarking Tool to characterize representative academic labs at DKU and ways to effectively integrate the efforts into education. Finally, the outcomes of two sample projects will be shared with an emphasis on the role of education in reshaping the sustainable development of the globe from a macroscopic perspective, as well as in supporting individuals from different cultural backgrounds from a microscopic perspective.
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