Arizona State University has received LEED Gold certification for its new science building, which is designed to be 40 percent more energy efficient compared to a traditional laboratory design, according to Aircuity.
The airside efficiency company worked with ASU to help the school’s largest research facility — the seven-story, 293,000-square-foot Interdisciplinary Science and Technology IV building — save energy through centralized demand control ventilation systems. A multiplexed centralized sensing system continually monitors critical indoor parameters, lowering the ventilation when the air is clean and increasing fresh air when an issue has been detected.
The building earned 46 total LEED points.
ASU first installed Aircuity in its Biodesign Institute in 2006. The initial phase of the installation paid for itself in less than a year, according to the company. After implementing Aircuity throughout the rest of the Biodesign Institute, ASU went on to install Aircuity in an additional 23 buildings across campus.
In September 2012, another Aircuity customer — University of California, Irvine — received recognition from the US Department of Energy for its energy-efficient building. UC Irvine’s Natural Sciences II building was selected as a showcase project in the DoE’s Better Buildings Challenge.
The university expects to achieve a 51 percent reduction in energy use in 2012 over the 2008 baseline, which would translate into an annual savings of $180,000.
Based on the university’s Smart Lab Initiative, UC Irvine is on track to reduce its energy use by 20 percent by 2014. UC Irvine expects to further reduce its energy use another 20 percent by 2020, exceeding President Obama’s objective by 100 percent.
President Obama launched the Better Buildings Challenge 2011. The program asks participating companies, universities, school districts and state and local governments to reduce the energy used across their building portfolios by 20 percent or more by 2020.
The Smart Lab initiative was first launched in 2008 by UC Irvine and uses an integrated design approach. Measures including centralized demand control ventilation, sharply reduced lighting power-density, efficient heat exhaust for equipment and the elimination of acoustic attenuators have been combined and provide the ability to achieve a 50 percent or higher reduction in laboratory energy use.