The Fall 2020 iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ) was released with the following message from Madhu Khanna, the Interim Director of iSEE:

Dear Colleagues,

Attached, please find attached the Fall 2020 “iQ” – the quarterly update from the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE).

It has been two months since I became interim director of ISEE.  It has been exciting to see ISEE bring in multimillion-dollar research grants, launch a new research initiative in regenerative agriculture, and help coalesce sustainable agriculture research on our campus during this period.

Our Certificate in Environmental Writing has engaged students in making insightful contributions to a new issue of Q Magazine. We have also expanded our opportunities for education and scholarly discourse with several online events, including those on nuclear energy and geothermal energy research.

We formally launched the new Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP 2020) on Oct 20, 2020. This ambitious plan is the result of the hard work of campus sustainability folks who worked hand-in-hand with Facilities & Services and incorporated the vision of hundreds of students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community members into a plan for the next five years and beyond — all the way to carbon neutrality no later than 2050!

I am so grateful to Evan Delucia for his efforts over the first seven years as the first director of our Institute. He has left iSEE as a vibrant part of the Illinois community, and I am working with our outstanding ISEE staff to expand upon the work already begun — as evidenced in this six-page update.

Please take a quick look at those updates and more in “iQ.” For more regular news, please sign up for our E-newsletter at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/5031776.

Wishing you a successful end to the fall semester,

Madhu

Hello 2020 researchers! 

After winning 1st place internationally in 2018 and 2019, lab researchers who use cold-storage at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are encouraged to register in the 2020 International Laboratory Freezer Challenge to save energy and help the campus win for a third-straight year.

Sign up HERE!

Campus efforts in more than 70 laboratories across 15 buildings earned Illinois the award last year. The total energy usage in these spaces decreased by an estimated 438 kWh/day or a combined annual total equivalent of 13.5 homes energy for one year.

Worldwide recognition

The University of Illinois research community has received international recognition from a number of organizations and media publications:

• Lab Manager Magazine, Cold Storage March 2019 Published article with participants quoted for expert advice here

• Nature Magazine feature published in Oct. 2018 and Sept. 2019 edition 

• S-Labs highlights our achievements in their short-listed profiles here 

• iSEE and Facilities & Services published news releases U of I Wins Freezer Challenge 

Labs that use ultra-ultra low temperature freezers (-150C), ultra-low temperature freezers (-80C), lab freezers (-40C to -20C), refrigerators, or cold rooms can earn points by taking action now.

For more details on how your lab can save cooling energy, visit freezerchallenge.org. 

The Freezer Challenge takes place between December 2019 and May 2020. Individual labs self-report and estimate their energy saving on score sheets. These sheets are made available via email upon registration and are due by May 1, 2020.

Reductions were achieved due to the dedication and creativity of researchers across campus in implementing best practices for cold storage management. They received points for taking actions such as properly maintaining freezers and refrigerators, discarding old samples, and retiring unneeded units.

Campus-specific highlights from the 2018 competition and 2019 competition are available on the Illinois Freezer Challenge website. 

In 2019, over 400 labs representing 41 organizations around the world competed, and Illinois was named one of three organizational winners by saving 160,000 kWh/year. The Ming Lab in the Department of Plant Biology, managed by Julie Nguyen, was named an honorable mention winner in the individual lab category.

The International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) and My Green Labs run the Freezer Challenge. Participants have already saved over 8.5 million kWh since 2017, approximately enough to offset the carbon emissions associated with driving over 15 million miles.

Past winners were announced at the I2SL conference and their accomplishments published in Nature. 

For more information on the Illinois campus achievements and competition, check out our Illinois-specific website: https://freezerchallengeui.wixsite.com/freezerchallenge

Join us and submit your scoresheet by midnight on May 1st to achieve world-class results!

For help getting started contact:

Madeline Barone @ mbarone2@illinois.edu

Madeline E. Barone, B.S.

Environmental Sustainability and Psychology

Energy Efficiency & Conservation Specialist | UIUC Facilities & Services

Co-Director | Eco-Olympics

https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelinebarone/

The University has been recognized for winning the Freezer challenge for a second year in a row, in the magazine Nature. Click the link to go to the site!  https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-019-00288-0

A cool competition for sustainable labs

Laboratory refrigeration requires a surprising amount of energy. Since 2017, the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge has pushed labs to reduce their draw.

Produced by

Inefficient freezers waste energy and money.Credit: Cavan Images/ Alamy

For scientists, a good freezer is like a good colleague: integral to doing your best work. But cooling comes at a great cost. Ultra-low temperature freezers, which usually store samples at –80°C, can use as much energy as an average household, and more as they get older. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands of units in labs around the world, that humble lab freezer has quite an energy footprint.

In 2017, My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) created the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge* to inspire labs around the world to reduce energy used for cold storage, from refrigerators to the coldest freezers. Individual labs or organizations complete a scorecard detailing the implementation of best practices and energy-saving processes: good management practices, including defrosting freezers; temperature tuning, such as setting a freezer at –70°C or higher; retiring unused refrigerators/freezers or replacing them with more efficient ones; and some unexpected improvements, such as storing certain samples at room temperature.

Labs receive points for every action that they take. In four categories, academia, the biopharma industry, hospitals and government/non-profit, individual labs and organizations that accumulate the most points win. There can be eight winners, all of whom receive an award and recognition in Nature. This year, awards were given to labs and organizations in three of the four categories.

“The number of participating labs in 2019 nearly doubled from 2018,” says Allison Paradise, CEO and founder at My Green Lab, bringing the number of entrants worldwide to about 400 this year.

Organizational winners

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign winning team Credit: University of Illinois

In a repeat of 2018, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, took the top spot among academic organizations by saving about 160,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. To win as a university, Madeline Barone, an undergraduate studying environmental science who organized the effort, made it her mission to get as many labs as possible involved. “Following up with people was super important,” she says.

Teamwork also made a big impact in the biopharma-organization category. Charles River — a global, preclincal contract research organization and headquartered in Wilmington, MA — registered all its sites around the world for the competition and encouraged them to compete against each other.

“This led to one of the most meaningful reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions we’ve ever seen,” Paradise says.

Winning team from Charles River

Charles River, Mattawan (MI), took the top spot. “We entered to see where we stood in relation to industry standards,” says neurobehavioral scientist, Rachel Tapp. The team ended up learning a lot. “Our sustainability crew is new within our Charles River site,” Tapp explains. “So, we learned much about who manages these systems and how they were managed.” Charles River, Mattawan saved about 423,000 kWh a year.

Rounding out the organizational winners, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earned a threepeat in the government/non-profit category. Even after wins in 2017 and 2018, the CDC added an estimated saving of 300,000 kWh a year.

Individual winners

Among individual laboratory winners, the Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Tissue Bank at Imperial College London took the top academic spot. To do that, says tissue bank manager George Gveric, “We increased the temperatures on all our freezers and rearranged samples so that freezers are opened less frequently.”

Winning team at Imperial college London

The top honor in the biopharma industry category for an individual lab went to Amyris Biology/Automated Strain Engineering Lab. The start-up is based in Emeryville, CA. Senior associate scientist, Gloria Sagala calls the Freezer Challenge “a great opportunity for our team to come together around a common goal to improve our energy efficiency with our cold storage.” Sagala and her colleagues removed inefficient and unnecessary freezers and implemented a system to track defrosting, saving the lab 30–40% in freezer energy.

Amyris Biology/Automated Strain Engineering Lab winning team Credit: Amyris Biology/Automated Strain Engineering Lab

An individual lab winner in 2018, the Inorganic and Radiation Analytical Toxicology Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) teamed up with the Clinical Chemistry Branch to take the individual government/non-profit lab category. “We keep entering because we keep trying to increase awareness of energy use for cold storage in our division,” says Deanna Jones, a team leader in the CDC’s Division of Laboratory Sciences. When asked about the biggest change this year, Jones says, “We have begun buying ENERGY STAR-rated freezers to replace old, less energy efficient ones.”

CDC winning teamCredit: CDC

Overall, the combined efforts of participants in 2019 saved about 2.4 million kWh a year. That’s enough energy to power more than 230 average American homes for a year.** Freezer Challenge organizers hope to see that number double again in 2020.

Organizational honorable mention:

• Charles River Laboratories, Leiden

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• US. National Institutes of Health

Individual-laboratory honorable mention:

• Janssen Immunology Biology Lab at La Jolla, CA, led by Steven Nguyen

• Laboratory Research & Reference Branch, Division of STD Prevention, CDC

• Ming Lab, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, managed by Julie Nguyen

*The Freezer Challenge is made possible through the generous support of sponsors, including 2019’s Gold Sponsors Eppendorf and PHCbi.