Sustainable You - Lab Personnel - Energy

Labs buildings offer many resources to lab personnel, allowing them to make groundbreaking work on campus. However, they are also some of the most energy-intensive buildings: in 2012, 16 of the 19 buildings with the highest annual energy cost were labs.

This bar graph shows the top 19 buildings with the highest energy cost on campus. The labs are shown in red, data centers in blue, and office buildings in green. 16 out of 19 are lab buildings, with the Clark Center being the highest at $2,500,000 and the Sherman Fairchild Science Building being the lowest, around $600,000.

Why are labs so energy intensive?

Some of the reasons why many labs are so energy intensive are due to the following, which are often needed for laboratory safety:

high ventilation rates
use of fume hoods
high plug load

Improvements

Initiatives like the Whole Building Energy Retrofit Program (WBERP) and the Energy Retrofit Program (ERP) have put in numerous energy efficiency investments, ultimately saving thousands on electricity and chilled water.

Programs

Freezer Challenge

The 2024 Freezer Challenge, administered by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL), is open to new participants! Learn more about it on their website.

Freezer Challenge Website

"Shut the Sash" Contest

"Do Good & Close the Hood": Saving Energy and Saving the Planet. Sketched graphic indicating that a fume hood should be closed.

The intercollegiate "Shut the Sash" Contest is a part of the University Alliance Group, which is supported by I2SL. It is a competition that keeps track of the sash height of fume hoods throughout labs on campus, in order to reduce energy waste from unnecessarily open hoods. Stanford has recently joined the competition after seeing success in energy reduction at various other universities.

This program is currently developed at Stanford and will be launched early next year.