Dedicated to advancing sustainable laboratories globally.
G1 System Optimization | The Case for System Improvement
Take AIM: A Case Study on How the AIM Tool Compares to Actual Project Performance
This presentation will provide a case study on the AIM tool, comparing its use to actual projects performed by GreenerU. The presentation will compare actual project performance against the predicted savings from the AIM tool. The intent is to compare the results of projects GreenerU has performed at the various phases of the project: initial scoping study, investment-grade audit, and achieved energy savings versus predicted savings from AIM. The presentation will provide an assessment on how AIM can be a useful tool to use in the energy efficiency toolbox.
Bridging the Gap: Aligning EHS and Sustainable Labs for Greater Impact
The University of Virginia's (UVA's) Sustainable Labs Program and Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) are two very different groups. To many, it may seem that their objectives conflict or that clashes between safety and sustainability are inevitable. However, at UVA, historic tensions have transformed into a collaboration founded on deep understanding and respect for the two groups' expertise and care for the UVA community. Since it was launched in 2017, the program has saved over $5 million in energy costs through a combination of retro-commissioning, infrastructure upgrades, and occupant engagement. This whole-building approach for reducing the environmental footprints of lab buildings requires the program to bridge communication gaps among engineers, architects, tradespeople, researchers, and EHS. This presentation explores how EHS and program goals and approaches may differ, but highlights similarities and where curiosity, understanding, respect, and compromise have enabled fruitful collaboration. This has resulted in positive impacts, including energy reduction, ventilation optimization, lab waste diversion, pre-construction preparation, composting in vivaria, development of lab design standards, and more. This presentation will explore the evolution of this mutually beneficial relationship, emphasizing opportunities for other institutions to apply lessons learned from interdisciplinary collaboration in laboratory research settings.
A Case Study in Water Efficiency of Laboratory and Manufacturing
Laboratory facilities present unique opportunities for water efficiency improvements, yet water reduction efforts are often addressed in isolation or secondary to energy initiatives, or ultimately deprioritized due to low payback. This presentation highlights a coordinated set of water efficiency initiatives implemented at the Kite Santa Monica facility, demonstrating how complementary energy and water reduction strategies can be packaged into a cohesive program. The work focused on identifying key contributors to laboratory water use across ventilation, cooling, and operational systems, and aligning improvement efforts. Collectively, these initiatives delivered a 48 percent reduction in total water use between 2022 and 2025. Laboratory space at the Kite Santa Monica facility is approximately 74 percent of total area. The resulting water intensity is approximately 25 gallons/sf/year compared to a mean peer group value of 85.8 gallons/sf/yr. This case study will highlight general strategies and practical ideas that lab owners, engineers, and operators can apply to advance water efficiency, including how to identify high-impact opportunities, connect water outcomes to broader sustainability goals, and integrate water management into existing lab performance programs.
G2 Sustainable Design | Strategic Approaches to Sustainability
From Utilization to a Capital Strategy: A Data-Driven Model for Managing a National Laboratory Facility Portfolio
Federal campuses, laboratories, installations, and mission-critical sites are managing complex inventories of aging, energy-intensive facilities nationwide. Speakers will review a U.S. Department of Energy national lab case study that transforms lab space utilization assessments into a forward-looking capital planning model. Through I2SL's Lab Benchmarking Tool and AIM Report, the team integrated 15 years of research space utilization data with historic energy performance and peer benchmarking, creating a comprehensive plan that links research activity, infrastructure condition, and energy consumption. The resulting strategy prioritizes investments to promote human wellness, enable scientific discovery, and reduce energy use and associated costs. Speakers will explore how the team developed a model to support predictive analysis through data-driven decision-making. Aligning utilization, physical condition, and space suitability data with benchmarked energy performance, the framework identifies targeted projects that measurably improve operational efficiency, reduce energy consumption, extend asset life, and promote high-performance research environments. Attendees will learn practical approaches for translating assessment and energy usage data into defensible implementation strategies. Speakers will discuss how these strategies can guide renewal, repurposing, retirement, consolidation, and acquisition decisions across federal laboratory portfolios.
Flagship Laboratories: The Art and Science of Sustainable Operations
The world's major academic, commercial, and government research institutions have delivered astounding S&T products and results over the past century. And they are setting visionary aspirations to “use their power for good” when it comes to sustainability and climate change targets. These entities face cultural, bureaucratic, administrative, and resource complexities that every institution of scale encounters as they operate some of the largest, most complex, multi-disciplinary research facilities in the world, and they are making tangible progress. Speakers will review the commonalities that enable improvements and help push the boundaries of sustainable research environment, including first-hand experiences, tools, practices, and supporting case study data from the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. Topics will cover: comparing enterprise-level influences across large-scale institutions in the United States and UK; aligning strategic visions and operational realities to embed sustainability into the way research and facilities are managed; identifying resources and talent, institutional buy-in, and structure oversight for continuity and accountability; assembling the team, providing measurable performance tracking, and generating credible, reproducible data on sustainability outcomes; and practicing transparency, reporting, and benchmarking.
From All of the Above to Best of the Bunch: Design Optimization of a Low-Energy Academic Lab in the Southeast
This session presents the design journey of a 160,000-square-foot academic research complex pursuing LEED Platinum in Climate Zone 3A, housing biomedical laboratories, vivarium, clinical skills spaces, classrooms, cafeteria, and administrative areas. Rather than implementing every available high-performance strategy, the project team evaluated a broad range of options and selected the “best of the bunch.” The resulting design is projected to achieve 44 percent energy savings and 38 percent energy cost savings. Early in design, modeling and benchmarking established a defensible performance baseline and tested sensitivities across architectural and MEP elements. These parametric studies defined critical performance thresholds that guided decision-making, helping prioritize strategies that reduced loads, EUI, and risk. Upstream capacity impacts were documented, so value analysis reflected the true cost of removing strategies. Renewable energy and electrification strategies, including onsite PV, were assessed to support LEED Platinum goals within budget constraints. As budget pressures emerged, a structured decision matrix was used to reassess HVAC and energy system options, preserving performance outcomes through informed tradeoffs. Ultimately, the project demonstrates how early, collaborative modeling can transform sustainability into a strategic design tool, illustrating a pragmatic, replicable pathway to high-performance laboratory design without an “all of the above” approach.
G3 Decarbonization | Making the Most of Mass Timber
Mass Timber for Laboratories: Promise, Performance, and Practical Limits
As the industry accelerates efforts to reduce embodied carbon, mass timber is increasingly proposed as a structural system for university and research facilities. However, laboratory environments present stringent acoustical and vibration performance requirements that may challenge the suitability of lightweight structural systems. This presentation summarizes research conducted by The Lab at Acentech evaluating the vibration and acoustical performance of mass timber assemblies. Analytical studies incorporating representative structural configurations were developed to assess floor vibration response, structural natural frequencies, and airborne and impact sound isolation performance relative to common laboratory criteria (e.g., VC curves and STC/IIC targets). The study examines the feasibility of integrating mass timber systems while maintaining compliance with stringent laboratory acoustical and vibration performance thresholds. The presentation compares the performance implications of mass timber and conventional concrete-steel systems for vibration-sensitive facilities and identifies conditions under which mass timber may require hybridization or alternative structural strategies to reliably meet performance objectives.
Balancing Safety and Sustainability: Optimizing Chemical Storage for Mass Timber Construction
As laboratory and research facilities pursue ambitious sustainability goals and future flexibility, optimizing performance without compromising safety requirements is a central challenge. Mass timber offers a compelling low-carbon structural solution, but its use raises important questions when paired with hazardous chemical storage. This presentation explores strategies for the adoption of mass timber in high-performance lab and research facilities without compromising code compliance or architectural intent. Mass timber systems such as cross-laminated timber and glue-laminated timber offer reduced embodied carbon and biophilic benefits but introduce unique considerations when paired with chemical storage governed by standards including National Fire Protection Association codes (NFPA) and the International Code Council International Building Code (IBC). Through case studies and code analysis, this session highlights coordination strategies to bring together interdisciplinary teams to optimize chemical storage for low-carbon lab environments and balance risk mitigation with sustainable, cost effective, and code complaint solutions. The presentation demonstrates how performance-based design, authority having jurisdiction engagement, and clear hazardous materials inventories can enable compliant, resilient, and expressive mass timber laboratories that support both rigorous research and occupant safety.
Computing for the Common Good: A Biophilic, Carbon-Conscious Home for Computer Science
The 93,000-square-foot Computer Science Laboratories building at UMass Amherst explores how carbon reduction strategies influence—and are influenced by—the lived experience of research occupants. As the University's first Carbon Zero project, the hybrid mass timber structure reduces embodied carbon by 60 percent compared to a composite steel and concrete baseline (390 to 218 kg CO2/meters squared), avoiding 505 metric tons of CO2. Concrete mixes incorporating 25 percent fly ash further reduce emissions. A high-performance enclosure, radiant heating and cooling, displacement ventilation, occupancy-based controls, and a ground-source heat pump connected to a district plant reduce operational carbon to 23 kg CO2/meters squared annually and achieve a predicted EUI of 32 kBtu/sf/year. By expanding life cycle assessment to consider occupant wellbeing, comfort, and behavior, the project reframes performance as both environmental and human. Daylit, biophilic interiors support collaboration and productivity, demonstrating how decarbonization strategies can shape research culture while delivering measurable carbon reductions.
G4 Sustainable Science | Data-Driven Decision-Making
Data-Driven Impact: Quantifying New Accomplishments in My Green Lab Certification 2.0
My Green Lab Certification 2.0 provides a structured, science-based framework for assessing and improving laboratory sustainability performance across diverse laboratory types. This presentation explores data from the first 1.5 years of the certification program, highlighting how laboratories use the program to prioritize key sustainability actions and where additional opportunities remain. Quantitative, sector-specific trends for My Green Lab Certification 2.0 and the included Impact Estimator tool allow examination of how academic, industry, government, and clinical laboratories use the program to quantify energy efficiency, water use reduction, chemical stewardship, and waste minimization. Attendees will gain an understanding of where organizations are concentrating improvement efforts and how these patterns support broader sustainability progress. The initial data from My Green Lab Certification 2.0 identifies measurable resource savings attributable to operational, behavioral, and equipment-focused interventions in laboratories around the world, demonstrating the impact of My Green Lab Certification 2.0 and its ability to transform laboratory operations.
Data-Driven, Sustainable Cold Storage: Converting Hidden Inefficiencies Into Shared Institutional Value
Cold storage consumes 16 to 26 percent of lab space in most research facilities. Our assessment of 90 institutions and 4,500+ cold storage units shows that, on average, only 54 percent of that capacity is actually used. More than half of stored materials were unusable, and only 10 percent were actively accessed. This talk explores how institutions can transform cold storage from a scattered, lab-by-lab burden into a shared, strategic resource. Using a data-driven approach to categorize materials by usage patterns, organizations can consolidate underutilized in-lab freezers and transition toward centralized, high-density, automated storage. A single automated system can replace up to 200 ULT freezers in a fraction of the footprint while consuming 72 percent less electricity and eliminating GWP refrigerants, unlocking space, energy, and cost savings. The presentation will highlight trends across diverse research environments and show how collaboration between sample management teams and facility planners enables institutions to design shared storage ecosystems that scale with research needs. Through a coordinated, institution-wide strategy, teams can: evaluate current cold storage infrastructure and utilization; quantify opportunities to reduce space, CO2 emissions, and operational costs; and implement shared tools, policies, and workflows that maintain order and reduce inventory burden. Learn how reimagining cold storage as a shared institutional asset can free up space, streamline operations, and advance sustainability goals.
Can LLMs Fill Scientific Data Gaps? Evaluating Generative AI for Water Quality Prediction in Laboratory Workflows
This research evaluates the performance of LLMs for water quality prediction, investigating whether generative AI can fill data collection gaps, reduce laboratory resource utilization, and accelerate research. The study asks a fundamental question for scientific laboratories: when atmospheric conditions are stable, does a technician need to physically visit every site, or can AI reliably estimate what those samples would have shown? Using sites across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, paired with over 35 weather variables from the free Open-Meteo API, we fine-tune LLMs to predict temperature, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. We then benchmark the outputs against laboratory standards, including R-squared, RMSE, Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency, and K-S distributional tests. Beyond accuracy, we examine whether AI-generated records preserve the deeper signatures real datasets carry: statistical distributions, parameter covariance, and extreme-event detection. We develop a Composite Confidence Score quantifying reliability site-by-site, giving laboratories a transparent decision tool rather than a black-box replacement. If validated, this could transform how scientific labs approach monitoring—shifting from calendar-driven collection to intelligence-driven triage where labs process only what AI cannot confidently predict, reducing reagent use, waste, and field emissions while expanding coverage beyond what physical sampling alone achieves.
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