HVAC Design for a Sustainable Lab Digital Conference
Original Air Date:
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Join Lab Design and our experts for this free digital conference where industry leaders will share insights on integrating energy-efficient HVAC systems into lab design and construction
Laboratory facilities consume significantly more energy than most other building types, with a substantial portion of this energy usage stemming from ventilation systems. In typical laboratories, HVAC systems are crucial for maintaining contamination control, ensuring air quality, and providing occupant comfort, making it essential for them to operate at peak efficiency.
Join Lab Design for this virtual event on HVAC Design for a Sustainable Lab, part of the Lab Design Digital Conference series, on November 19, 2025. These webinars will feature expert insights on installing and maintaining HVAC systems in laboratory settings. Attendees will learn key questions that lab planners, architects, end users, and others should consider when initiating a lab build or renovation project. Discover how to effectively integrate HVAC systems into lab design and construction and plan for their future operation and maintenance. The series will also cover the financial advantages of sustainable lab practices, tips for improving energy efficiency, and the latest technologies in HVAC design and remote monitoring. Each presentation will be followed by an interactive Q&A session with the speakers.
Participants can attend each free webinar live and/or on demand. Sign up once to gain access to all the webinars in this series.
The webinars in the Lab Design Digital Conference series are free to attend live and/or on demand. Select sessions will be available for AIA/HSW continuing education credit.
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Lab Design is an AIA CES approved education provider
Agenda
11:00am-12:00pm ET
Immersive Lab Design for Long-Term High Performance
In the evolving landscape of Facilities Management (FM), effective collaboration plays a pivotal role in building design. FM is responsible for maintaining the high-performance years after design and construction is complete, therefore it’s important that FM is integrated in the design.
This presentation explores the integration of immersive design techniques, in the creation of lab buildings, emphasizing client collaboration throughout the design process. The objective is to guide FM and lab engineers through advanced technologies such as virtual reality (VR), 3D modeling, and augmented reality (AR). Attendees will gain insights into practical applications, benefits, and challenges associated with these technologies in enhancing the design, construction, and operational phases.
This case study is of a medical device manufacturing client who is a global leader that prioritizes minimal downtime and maintenance-friendly solutions. This client also has a 100 percent decarbonization goal by 2030. Sustainability takes center stage with the incorporation of a heat recovery chiller and the implementation of lower temperature heating water, setting the stage for a future geothermal conversion. Balancing highly sustainable systems, with demanding operational expectations was the synergy required to be considered a successful design. Initial decision-making for MEP and lab system layouts, informed by VR, facilitated invaluable feedback from facilities and lab engineers.
This presentation will hope to inspire these integrated design efforts so that the resilient project goals with maintenance-friendly solutions can be fulfilled in construction.
Learning objectives:
Explore several 3D-immersive strategies to be used during building design phrases.
Show benefits of having Facilities Management (FM) and lab engineers engaged early in design while using virtual reality (VR).
Learn how decarbonization systems, while adding some complexity, can be well-coordinated with lab piping systems in a condensed, walkable ceiling application.
Explore an early use of augmented reality (AR) for how digital twin can be beneficial in lab building in aiding facilities maintenance.
This course is approved by AIA CES for 1 LU credit
Speaker
Ben Pielhop
Senior Mechanical Engineer
HGA
12:30-1:30pm ET
New I2SL Tools for HVAC Savings in Lab Facilities
This presentation introduces the newest tools from the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories’ flagship Labs2Zero program and shows how they can be used to advance operational efficiency in lab facilities’ HVAC systems.
The Labs2Zero program’s major release of 2025 is the AIM Report, an automated energy audit software tool designed to help lab owners, lab planners, architects, engineers, contractors, and HVAC product manufacturers build the business case for energy efficiency projects. This pioneering resource combines key building data with intelligent assumptions and a lab-specific measure library to enable users to assemble custom packages of energy-efficiency measures. The AIM tool’s outputs include estimated savings and implementation costs for all measures, as well as case studies of the measures in action.
The AIM Report is integrated with I2SL’s existing Laboratory Benchmarking Tool platform (lbt.i2sl.org), which also hosts the Labs2Zero performance scores for lab buildings. The presentation will reveal upcoming updates to the scoring systems for both energy and operational emissions performance, and will conclude with a look-ahead to the coming year of program releases.
Learning objectives:
Participants will be able to:
List some of the high-priority pieces of data required to assess a lab building for potential energy efficiency opportunities in its HVAC systems and elsewhere.
Identify three lab stakeholder groups that can benefit from using the AIM Report automated energy audit software and propose example use cases.
Begin to use I2SL’s Labs2Zero tools to benchmark lab buildings and to obtain quantitative estimates for savings and implementation costs of energy projects to improve performance.
Explain how performance scores for lab buildings enable faster prioritization of attention among a portfolio of buildings and more effective tracking of performance over time.
This course is approved by AIA CES for 1 LU credit
Speakers
Gordon Sharp
President
I2SL
Alison Farmer
Labs2Zero Program Director, Secretary of the Board of Directors
I2SL
Deirdre Carter
Energy and Sustainability Manager
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
2:00-3:00pm ET
HVAC Design Approaches for Sustainable Laboratories
HVAC systems in a typical laboratory facility can use five to 10 times as much energy as the systems in a typical office building. This higher energy use is due to many factors, including 100 percent outside air systems, 24-hour-a-day operation, high internal heat gains, high air change rate requirements, equipment exhaust requirements, and high fan energy. With this significant energy use, the incentive for creative sustainable design grows—not only to create forward-thinking research spaces, but to maximize a lab’s ROI.
In this webinar, approaches to create sustainable laboratory systems will be presented at an accessible level for a wide audience. These approaches will include broader categories and specific design features with examples. Included will be not only direct HVAC items, but also how architectural design, laboratory planning, and operational decisions can impact savings. Future trends in sustainable design, including electrification and wellness design, will be presented.
Learning objectives:
Learn and understand how laboratory HVAC systems operate, providing a base from which to explore design approaches to create more sustainable laboratories.
Learn four general approaches and, inside each, specific design paths to reduce the amount of outside air required to serve laboratory spaces.
Learn how small decisions in architectural design and laboratory planning can make big impacts on HVAC system energy use.
Understand energy recovery system options and how they reduce energy use.
Identify operational and control approaches that can significantly reduce energy use.
Learn about future trends in laboratory HVAC system design and wellness design features for laboratory uses.
This course is approved by AIA CES for 1 LU credit
Speaker
Greg Johnson
Partner
Newcomb & Boyd