Closing in on Net Zero Energy for Laboratories

Published May 19, 2015 on labdesignnews.com.

In this month’s column for Lab Design News we explore strategies to achieve net zero energy laboratory buildings, which are typically been the most energy-intensive facilities.

As a building type, labs have historically been the most energy-intensive facilities. This poses a tremendous challenge when designing lab buildings as net-zero energy consumers. A few prototype lab projects with net-zero energy intent do exist, usually with unique conditions of light lab programs and/or favorable climates. However, achieving this goal may be possible for a broader spectrum of academic science buildings, because teaching spaces have lower energy demands than primarily wet research, fume-hood intensive lab facilities. These academic labs are typically university teaching facilities that house a blend of chemistry and biology labs, dry instrumental and computational spaces with varying proportions of classroom, office, conference and public gathering spaces. While we know net-zero is achievable in relatively “light” research buildings, the real challenge is attaining this level of performance in high-intensity use labs for which these “light” research buildings serve as a case study.