Securing Funding for Sustainable Lab Design

How do you fund sustainable laboratory design strategies when project budgets are tight, and competing priorities are everywhere? This interactive roundtable will focus on the practical challenge of making the financial case for sustainable design and finding creative ways to support investments in high-performance laboratories. ​

Using Morehead State University’s Science & Engineering Building as one example, the discussion will explore how project teams have combined capital funding, grants, incentives, private support, lifecycle savings, and other strategies to advance sustainability goals. ​

Attendees should bring their own funding challenges, share approaches that have worked or failed, and work through a hypothetical project scenario to identify ways to prioritize investments and build a compelling business case. The discussion will also examine how energy performance, indoor environmental quality, resilience, laboratory safety, occupant well-being, and long-term operational savings can strengthen the case for sustainable design.

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Learning objectives:

1. Identify funding strategies and potential sources of financial support for sustainable laboratory design, including capital funding, grants, incentives, private funding, and projected operational or lifecycle savings.
2. Develop approaches for communicating the financial value of sustainable laboratory investments to owners, institutional leadership, and other decision-makers, including strategies for demonstrating return on investment and long-term operational value.
3. Evaluate sustainable design investments based on initial cost, lifecycle cost, energy performance, resilience, operational performance, and potential impacts on laboratory safety, indoor environmental quality, and occupant well-being.
4. Apply peer-generated strategies for balancing sustainability goals with budget constraints and project priorities, using energy performance, resilience, occupant well-being, safety, and long-term operational savings to strengthen the financial case for sustainable laboratory design.