Show Me The Money! Connecting the dots between sustainability and federal grants

Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder
Allen Doyle, M.S., University of California-Davis

Presently, scientists that apply for US federal grants are not required, asked, or even encouraged to include sustainability considerations in their grant proposals. Federal Regulations already require green spending of grant dollars, (CFR Title 45, 74.44 (a) (3) (vi)) for HHS (Health and Human Services, including NIH, CDC & FDA) yet this has gone un-enforced and is not well known. This is surprising given that this regulation is next to commonly enforced stipulations such as employing minority and women-owned businesses. Substantial resource savings (energy, etc.) could be realized by including sustainability considerations in campus wide and lab practices proposed in grant applications. In many cases, they would benefit research or campus conditions. For example, energy efficient equipment purchasing could lead to lowest total cost of ownership, equipment sharing could lead to research collaboration, and cold storage management could lead to improved sample access, freezer reliability, and sample security. Conservation in the scientist's workplace—the laboratory—presently depends on voluntary participation because there is generally no direct connection between the resources consumed (energy, water, floor space, trash disposal) and lab finances, so without a doubt, an income connection would have a much greater impact than 'good will' alone. Incorporation of sustainability considerations into the granting process would achieve this goal and also help drive the market towards greener, resource efficient lab products. Join us for a discussion on how together we can influence the granting process to move in this direction.

Biographies:

Kathy Ramirez-Aguilar is the manager of the CU Green Labs Program at the Univ. of Colorado-Boulder (CU-Boulder), a program she has been building & creating since 2009. She has a doctorate in Analytical Chemistry and 15 years of laboratory research experience within the fields of Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry, & Organic Chemistry. Working as a research scientist, she saw a real need for a program to engage scientists in conservation. With the birth of her twin daughters & her hope for their future, grew her passion to promote change & create a program focused on resource conservation in labs which could serve as a model for other campuses to adopt.

After 20 y of ocean chemistry, soil and permafrost research, the urgency of climate disruption and environmental degradation compelled Allen to leave the lab and work with scientists on their workplace. He brings an occupant focus to lab energy conservation: Co-founder LabRATS; developing a ten-module green lab program; moderator of Labs21 appliance WiKi; organizer of 100+ member national network; reducing plug load through cold storage management and the Freezer Challenge contest; and HVAC optimization through temperature relaxation and control banding. As sustainability manager at UC Davis he interacts at all levels of campus and hopes that research labs and their stakeholders will reach ambitious standards of quality with dramatic improvements in resource consumption. He collaborates with laboratory trade groups (NELAC, APHL) and federal agencies (DOE, NIH, CDC) and private sector laboratories.

 

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