Behind every scientific breakthrough is a facility that runs on intense energy demands. High air-change rates, complex equipment, and continuous activity make labs uniquely difficult to decarbonize—but also uniquely positioned to drive innovation in laboratory sustainability.
As labs work to balance high energy demands with sustainability goals, the focus is shifting from pledges to proof—driving measurable impact, smarter systems, and accountability from the bench to the boardroom.
Tackling scope 3 emissions and embodied carbon
One of the most urgent challenges now facing laboratories is scope 3 emissions, particularly embodied carbon.
“Embodied carbon refers to the emissions generated in creating, transporting, and installing both building materials of a lab, as well as its mechanical equipment, furnishings, and equipment,” explains Gordon Sharp, president of the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL). While operational emissions accumulate over time, embodied carbon is released immediately. “When you build a new facility, you get an enormous jump in emissions because every material and piece of equipment carries the embodied-carbon content from someone else’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions used to make it.”
At the 2025 My Green Lab Summit, Jeffrey Whitford, vice president of sustainability and social business innovation at MilliporeSigma, described how suppliers are confronting the complexity of scope 3 emissions through transparency.
“We’re going to be carbon-footprinting our entire product portfolio,” Whitford said, noting that the process will begin in early 2026. “This level of transparency and rigor is what matters when you are fighting battles of people not believing things at the end of the day.”
Whitford was referring to the growing demand for verifiable, data-driven sustainability claims across science and industry. He added that progress on scope 3 emissions will depend on the same openness and collaboration throughout the scientific supply chain.
As environmental product declarations become more common, laboratories will gain clearer visibility into these upstream emissions. Sustainability is expanding beyond facilities to include procurement, design, and supplier accountability.
From pledges to proof
For years, laboratories have made strong commitments to sustainability, but few have had tools to measure progress. “One of the issues historically around laboratory sustainability has been the difficulty of understanding the relative performance of labs against their peers with respect to energy and emissions,” says Sharp. “This is due to many factors, including the wide diversity of lab types and the complexity of their operations, making performance comparisons difficult. As a result, most energy and emissions rating systems, such as Energy Star, do not rate laboratory buildings.”
That is beginning to change. I2SL’s Energy Score and Operational Emissions Score now provide a transparent way to compare lab performance across institutions. “These scores are very similar to Energy Star scores and for the first time provide an easy, transparent means to clearly quantify a lab building’s sustainability performance against its peers,” Sharp explains. “A reverse scoring approach or Target Setter feature … correlates a desired energy score with what the energy use that building would need to achieve that score or performance target. This creates accountability of the design team to an owner’s specific performance sustainability or score target.”
That accountability, experts say, is not only transforming how labs measure success—it’s changing how people work.
At Takeda, Johanna Jobin, global head of environment and sustainability, said certification and engagement programs are helping to turn sustainability from a corporate goal into a daily practice.
“We’ve already seen a lot of great results across many of our sites in Germany,” she said. “For example, over 80 percent of our lab staff have been involved in My Green Lab, and they’ve had over 100 ideas—from simple solutions to shut off the lights to better freezer maintenance. And then, even in our lab in Georgia, we’ve saved over $30,000 a year just by improving our lab practices. So we’re seeing a lot of these opportunities for value creation.”
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Jobin noted that certifications like those from My Green Lab have provided a tangible way to engage employees in sustainability efforts and show measurable outcomes. Together, these efforts illustrate a defining shift for research organizations: sustainability is no longer a pledge—it’s proof in action.
A systems view of sustainability
Isolated initiatives won’t define the next phase of sustainability. As Sharp suggests, “Think about applying sustainability in a portfolio-wide program versus a project approach. Start with an evaluation of a lab building portfolio … those buildings that are low scoring versus their peers can then be targeted for energy and emission reductions efforts.”
That systems-level mindset is gaining momentum across the scientific community. At Roche, Rolf Slaats, global coordinator for laboratory workplace and sustainability, described how clear top-down goals and local creativity work hand in hand. “Roche committed to be net zero by 2045, and that also means that the labs need to be net zero by 2045—and for me, that’s quite some pressure,” he said. “It’s a challenge, because we all know that labs are very difficult to make more sustainable.”
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Slaats emphasized that leadership commitment must be matched by freedom for scientists to experiment with sustainability. “This combination of bottom-up motivation as well as top-down targeting—that’s sort of a golden combination for your organization,” he said. “People on the floor are allowed to work, to spend some time on creativity, on trying to find ways to reduce the footprint of their lab.”
He added that data remains critical to sustaining that progress: “It’s very important to quantify whatever you do … you can show the effect of what you’ve done and also make an estimate of what action has priority because it has the most potential for impact.”
To make data more actionable, I2SL’s new Actionable Insights and Measures (AIM) Report helps laboratories translate performance data into measurable reductions in energy and emissions. The web-based software, Sharp says, can “quickly survey and evaluate a portfolio to determine where energy efficiency measures can be applied with the best ROI, creating a prioritized list of buildings that can be addressed over a reasonable time period.”
Meanwhile, programs such as I2SL’s International Fume Hood Challenge and My Green Lab’s Freezer Challenge encourage researchers and facilities teams to work together. “If we can take that enthusiasm [from researchers] and couple it with the facility people … now everyone’s on the same team,” Sharp explains. “It’s a coordinated effort—and everyone’s pulling in the same direction.”
Smart ventilation, real-time data, and maintenance
Even as labs adopt new technologies, Sharp emphasizes that basic operations, such as service and maintenance, remain among the most powerful levers for reducing emissions.
At the Summit, Courtney Phillips, CEO of Matrix Fluidix, reinforced the point. “According to a 2022 Deloitte study, a full 65 percent of greenhouse-gas output from lab equipment can be attributed to service, spare parts, and end-of-life management,” she said. Even minor improvements in field-service delivery and remote troubleshooting can save dozens of trips and reduce carbon emissions.
Phillips also encouraged labs to celebrate incremental gains. “Cherry-picking is not only allowed but encouraged, because we have to start somewhere,” she said. “Small actions can have enormous benefits.”
Sharp agreed, noting that “monitoring-based commissioning systems that take in vast amounts of real-time information and can diagnose and flag issues to be resolved by the maintenance staff are being increasingly adopted to great advantage.”
The next decade: automation, AI, and human collaboration
Artificial intelligence and automation are already reshaping laboratory operations—and, in turn, sustainability strategies. Sharp describes this as “the smart-labs concept of applying energy to the right place at the right time.” By precisely matching ventilation and equipment operation to actual research needs, smart systems can dramatically cut energy use without compromising safety.
Still, as automation expands, experts emphasize that people must remain at the center of this transition. Phillips underscored that balance: “We have to make sure sustainability makes economic and social sense—it can’t come at the expense of people,” she said.
Toward a new identity for sustainable science
Across these conversations, a consistent theme emerges: sustainability is no longer an add-on—it’s an integral part of how science itself is conducted.
Sharp’s point is simple but powerful: sustainability begins with better use of what labs already have. “The lowest cost and lowest emissions lab is the one that is not built,” he says, emphasizing that smarter space utilization can prevent the need for new construction altogether.
From embodied carbon to digital monitoring, the next era of lab sustainability will be defined by the integration of systems, people, and data.
