National lab aims to lead in energy conservation

Susan Montoya Bryan | The Associated Press

7/24/2008 -

ALBUQUERQUE — Sandia National Laboratories may lead the U.S. Department of Energy's sprawling complex when it comes to putting up the most environmentally friendly buildings.

But lab managers and employees said Thursday during an energy conference that they want to step up their efforts to help Sandia become a national leader in energy conservation and in developing renewable energy technology. "There's a chance to raise the bar and have it become more of a core value," said Jack Mizner of the lab's Environmental Planning Department, who helped organize the two-day conference.

Like other large government and private institutions, Sandia has to contend with executive orders and DOE requirements that call for more "green" buildings and reductions in everything from water and electricity to natural gas and diesel fuel.

The lab also is not immune from the skyrocketing energy costs plaguing the rest of America. Sandia officials said the lab's electricity bill — now $13.5 million a year — could double in January.

Sandia officials said the lab already is taking steps to conserve energy, such as using solar photovoltaic panels to light up parking lots at night, improving cooling systems for its high computing performance center and encouraging workers to turn out the lights when they leave.

The lab also has done extensive audits of how much electricity and natural gas its buildings use, how much emissions are given off from lab waste and how business travel and commuting time by employees impact the lab's carbon footprint beyond its campus on Albuquerque's southern edge. That gives the lab a baseline to judge its success as it ramps up conservation efforts.

The main mission for Sandia, known for its defense research and work to secure the nation's nuclear stockpile, is national security. Those attending the conference pointed out that having a sustainable energy supply is certainly a matter of keeping the country safe. "I often equate global security with national security," said Charlie Hanley, Sandia's solar systems manager. "For us to be secure as a nation, we have to have some amount of stability or at least understand what's going on globally, and energy is a global issue."

Hanley and other lab officials talked about the untapped potential for alternative sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass during a panel discussion earlier Thursday. They all said improvements in technology, which Sandia is working on, will help make alternative energy a bigger piece of the nation's energy portfolio.

Along with the research and development happening at Sandia, Hanley said the lab can play an important role by serving as a testing ground for new technologies, monitoring capabilities and behavior modification aimed at conservation.

The hope, lab employees said, is that Sandia's conservation efforts will have a ripple effect throughout Albuquerque and beyond as more people start to think about how they use electricity and other resources.

Howard Passell, an ecologist at Sandia, headlined a workshop Thursday aimed at remaking the lab to be a national leader in conservation. Passell said he plans to assemble the expertise and ideas shared during the brainstorming session into a proposal for lab managers to consider.

"Sandia is in the same situation as many, many other very large institutions in the U.S. and in developed nations," he said. "There's a tremendous amount of change that's going to have to take place probably in all of these big institutions. We could probably be paving the way to find solutions that can lead to those changes."

On the Web

Sandia National Laboratories: www.sandia.gov

U.S. Department of Energy: www.doe.gov