Reducing Carbon Emissions—A LEED® Platinum Laboratory's Approach
Dirk von Below, AIA, LEED AP®, Flad Architects
During this presentation, a speaker from Flad Architects will present Stony Brook University's Advanced Energy Center, a LEED Platinum research facility designed to achieve net-zero energy usage and reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent.
The center is one of the first chemical and biological research laboratories to achieve LEED Platinum certification and is a showcase project for the university's research mission of discovering new technologies for renewable energy production.
For this project, Flad Architects accounted for the embodied carbon in the construction materials and investigated future trends of sustainable architecture, laboratory design, and operation. The speaker will explain the process of documenting the carbon content and the strategies applied to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the construction process.
These strategies included:
- Evaluating the economics of sustainable construction.
- Utilizing renewable energy with the goal of net-zero energy usage.
- Prolonging the useful lifespan of the facility by including flexibility in the design.
- Managing the construction material process from generation to waste disposal.
- Balancing sustainability with safety.
- Assembling an integrated design team.
- Using building information modeling (BIM) to the best advantage.
The center is an excellent example of a new design paradigm that allows the university to study the impact of sustainable construction and develop new knowledge that can be used to continually improve its performance. Through the use of energy monitoring and renewable, on site energy generation, the facility provides the opportunity for students and researchers to engage in the process of reducing its environmental footprint over time.
Biography:
Dirk von Below has 20 years of comprehensive architectural experience delivering science buildings to private and institutional clients. Mr. von Below has managed large projects that balance state-of-the-art design, efficiency, and environmental design within a tight financial framework. Mr. von Below is a LEED AP and a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. Mr. von Below's project experience while at Flad Architects includes the International Energy Research and Development Laboratory; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Integrated Biorefinery Research Facility in Golden, Colorado; Stony Brook University's Advanced Energy Center in Stony Brook, New York; and the New York State Department of Energy Conservation's Alternate Fuel Vehicle Research Laboratory in Malta, New York.