Greener Dawn

Energy Benchmarking Labs (Labs 21)

February 3rd, 2010 / 1 Comment

Laboratories nationwide are very energy intensive typically consuming 5 to 10 times more energy per square foot than traditional office buildings.  Certain cleaning rooms and specialty labs can consume as much as 100 times the energy of similarly sized space.  Despite the high energy use intensity levels, laboratories can be designed and retrofitted with energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and green sustainable practices.  Laboratories for the 21^st century has instituted an approach to optimizing energy performance in the lab.  Some of the energy difficulties include controlling the high cost of ventilation in labs, the effect of heat gain from plug loads and energy waste resulting from different HVAC requirements within the building zones.  The mantra should be “reduce, reuse, and recycle.”

Some best practices for promoting energy efficiency in laboratories:

• Benchmark, monitor, and report annually on building energy performance
• Consider energy recovery from exhaust air or process cooling water
• Incorporate energy monitoring and control systems with direct digital controls
• Fume hoods can use as much energy as an entire house so be cognizant of type, location, and size
• Use renewable energy such as solar for building lighting only after energy efficiency is applied
• On-site power generation utilizing cogeneration could be a viable option

It all starts with utilizing the Energy Benchmarking Tool through Laboratories for the 21^st Century, which is a resource co-sponsored by the EPA and DOE for laboratories.  This allows laboratory buildings to input both their whole building metrics as well as system level metrics in order to compare the performance to other buildings in the database.

Posted by Fan Ding in Commercial