Several University of California recipients were recognized by the first annual Go Beyond Awards, which honor individuals, organizations, projects and laboratory manufacturers that "go beyond" the status quo to minimize the environmental impacts of laboratory and other high-tech facilities and lab equipment. The awards were publicly announced by R&D Magazine in the November issue of its Laboratory Design Newsletter.
UC award recipients included:
• UC Santa Barbara's Laboratory Research and Technical Staff (LabRATS), a volunteer program created in 2005 to make the campus' labs more environmentally conscious and efficient, won in the organization category.
• Karl Brown, deputy director with the California Institute for Energy and Environment, took the award in the individual category, for developing programs to improve lab efficiency -- including campuswide goal-setting based on benchmark data, most likely maximum (MLM) energy use estimates for HVAC design practices and monitoring-based commissioning.
• UC Merced's new Science and Engineering Building earned an honorable mention in the new construction category.
• UC also received honorable mention in the organization category for its extensive laboratory sustainability efforts across its 10 campus system.
"UC research is leading the way in building efficiency for standards and practices that will likely become commonplace in the next decade. We're making those sustainability goals a reality on our campuses through improved building design and systems and in the dedicated work of our faculty and staff," said Michael Bocchicchio, UC's assistant vice president for facilities administration. "Together, we are making real progress toward carbon-neutral, zero-net energy buildings and practices."
The awards were first presented by the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) and R&D Magazine at the 2008 Laboratories for the 21st Century conference in San Jose in September. Award winners have shown their commitment to the goals of Laboratories for the 21st Century (Labs21) and excellence in sustainability that goes beyond the lab, beyond the United States and beyond being "green" when considering building projects, products and services.
For more information on the Go Beyond Awards, including a link to R&D Magazine's Laboratory Design Newsletter article on the winners, visit the I2SL Web site at www.i2sl.org.
The Laboratories for the 21st Century program is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
R&D Magazine is widely known for the prestigious R&D 100 Awards, "the Oscars of Invention" that acknowledge the most innovative ideas of the year.
BACKGROUND ON UC RECIPIENTS
The LabRATS, including Allen Doyle, manager of UC Santa Barbara's soil ecology lab, Katie Maynard, the campus' sustainability coordinator, and Jeff Kirby, development engineer in the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, have devoted thousands of hours to the all-volunteer program.
"The unique thing about our program is that we're comprehensive and behavioral-based," Maynard said. "There's no other program in the country that is both. Every other program focuses on energy, or just water, but we focus on everything."
The LabRATS' key projects include the creation of a one-stop shopping destination where UCSB researchers can get free, donated surplus chemicals for their experiments; thermometer exchanges to replace the more hazardous mercury thermometers with alcohol versions; a bulb-free lighting program that encourages researchers to use daylight and reduce excessive overheard lighting; more efficient fume-hood management that can save thousands of dollars each year; and laboratory assessments that check everything from how many light bulbs are needed to the temperature of the rooms.
"We initially try to bring a resource or a piece of equipment that will actually improve their research. So we're not just taking up their time -- we're actually providing something that will make it go better," said Doyle, who co-founded the groundbreaking Laboratory Assessments for Research Sustainability program of student-led lab assessments.
For more on the UCSB LabRATS program: www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1846
Karl Brown has been the leading champion of laboratory sustainability on UC and California State University campuses, establishing models for universities and laboratories across the country. Brown also co-developed the award-winning unique energy efficiency partnership between UC, CSU and the four investor-owned utilities in California.
"Laboratories can be energy-efficient," Brown said. "Lab buildings, which consume the majority of energy on campus, should be part of our sustainability policies and perform with the maximum energy and water efficiency policy within existing budget constraints."
Brown developed the Labs21 Pilot Partnership for UC Merced, and is responsible for the requirement that all UC lab buildings meet the Labs21 Environmental Performance Criteria, and was one of the main proponents for the adoption of UC's award-winning Policy on Sustainable Practices in 2003.
Brown developed the "Monitoring-Based Commissioning" program of the UC/CSU/IOU Energy Efficiency Partnership, a pioneering approach to use energy efficiency incentive funding to install ongoing sub-metering and monitoring systems to assure continued high performance of buildings. Half of the buildings in the MBCx program on UC and CSU campuses are laboratory buildings.
Since 2004, this partnership has funded more than 150 energy efficiency projects in the UC system, reducing the university's annual energy consumption by more than 4.8 million therms and nearly 70 million kilowatt hours.
For more on Karl Brown: www.ucop.edu/ciee/staff/brownk.html
The university also received an honorable mention for UC Merced's new Science and Engineering Building. The 237,000 square-foot lab fulfilled a number of ambitious green building goals, including substantial reduction in energy consumption surpassing planning expectations and an anticipated Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating. Among the building's most innovative design features are a four-pipe thermal distribution system to minimize simultaneous heating and cooling in laboratory spaces and a design process using benchmark-based performance targets.
Both the entire new main campus and the Science and Engineering I Building itself are performing better than planned, with energy use below the initial campus goal set at 80 percent of 1999 equivalent facility benchmarks. The campus is using only 70 percent of the benchmark, with the laboratory building and campus peak-period use coming in even lower. Further reductions are anticipated through additional plant and building commissioning opportunities identified during the course of the monitoring.
These facilities are demonstrating the viability of the campus plan to cut energy use in half in the near future relative to a 20th-century scenario, and are leading the way toward the longer-term goals of zero-net energy buildings and carbon-neutral campuses.
Fulfilling UC Merced's role as a Labs21 Pilot Partner, measurements of building and campus performance were presented at the 2008 Labs21 conference (www.epa.gov/lab21gov/conf/past/2008/index.htm).
For more on UC Merced's environmental sustainability programs: http://administration.ucmerced.edu/2.asp?uc=1&lvl2=39&contentid=94
The University of California system as a whole was also singled out for its wide-ranging sustainability efforts, including the adoption of a strong student-driven sustainability policy that requires all lab new construction projects to meet the Labs21 Environmental Performance Criteria; its partnership with California utilities to energy-retrofit campuses; participating in the development of Labs21, with UC Merced as a pilot partner and UC campuses Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine and San Francisco also joining in with their own Labs21 projects; exemplary new lab designs on many campuses (earning LEED Gold or better -- including LEED Platinum status for the UCSB Bren facility and UC Davis' Tahoe Environmental Research Center); and a variety of educational workshops and conference sessions on laboratory sustainability.
For more information about UC sustainability programs: www.ucop.edu/facil/sustain