Sustainable Scientists

Cover story for the February 15, 2009 issue of Environmental Science and Technology [download .pdf].

Scientists are front and center in quantifying and solving environmental problems. Yet, much can be done to enhance sustainability within the scientific enterprise itself, particularly by trimming the energy use associated with research facilities and the equipment therein.

Sponsors of research across the public and private sectors unwittingly spend on the order of $10 billion each year for energy in the U.S. alone: the underlying inefficiencies drain funds from the research enterprise while causing 80 million tons of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse-gas emissions.

This is equivalent to the emissions from:

• 7 million U.S. homes;
• 15 million U.S. passenger cars;
• 420,000 rail cars of coal; or
• 17 coal-fired power plants.

These are significant sums considering the amount of additional research that could be funded and emissions that could be reduced if the requisite energy were used more efficiently. By following commercially proven best practices in facility design and operation, scientists and the sponsors of sciences can efficaciously halve these costs and so do their part to put society on a low-carbon diet. Improving energy productivity is a doubly worthy challenge, given that those making the biggest contributions to the science of sustainability often do so in highly energy intensive facilities such as laboratories, computing centers, and hyper-clean environments.