While King’s has been greatly investing in its broad sustainability agenda, there has also been a drive to innovate in our laboratories. Despite covering just over 10% of our floor space, our labs are spread across all 4 campuses and use a disproportionately large amount of energy and water, as well as produce dangerous chemical waste.
To address this untapped area, Kings has invested in over the past 18 months in a post to lead in this area as well as invested in the projects highlighted. Here are just some of the scheme’s we’ve recently implemented to improve the efficiency of King’s labs.
Savawatt Installations
This £38,000 installation project saw 584 Savawatt controls being installed into our research fridges and freezers which saves about £15,000 each year (and roughly 68 tonnes of CO2) meaning it pays back its cost in about 2.5 years.
Green Impact: Lab Sustainability Champions
Just like in our King’s offices, our lab staff take part in an awards programme which helps reduce energy, water and general waste across the labs. They also get audited for their work at the end of 
each year for an award promoting an environment of commitment to sustainability.
This year 20 teams are participating which is the most laboratory teams for any university in the UK.
Drying Cabinet Exchange
33 old uninsulated drying cabinets were consolidated and replaced by 28 insulated efficient models, paying back our investment in 4 years and achieving £15,000 of annual savings.
Fume Cupboard Management Policy
Already applied to new fume cupboard installations, this technical policy will take over a year to implement but will result in hundreds of thousands of pounds saved!
Cold Storage Policy
Our laboratories are subject to a ‘Cold Storage Policy’ which is used at other universities such as Oxford amongst others. This promotes efficient, safe and sustainable practise for using the research laboratory fridges and freezers.
Current/Future Endeavours
- Continued installation and refurbishment of fume cupboards and ventilations systems
- Introduction of Warp-it system for redistributing unwanted resources
among other institutions such as UCL who have been very successful with the system - Joint UCL/KCL procurement mini-tenders
More to come!
Look to our case studies on our labs page for summaries of all the above projects and plenty more to come, including a variety of small projects lead by local lab staff (timer installations, equipment exchanges, UPS installation, freezer warm-ups, waterless condensers and more).
If interested in our growing collection of case studies see here:
You can also contact our Research Efficiency Officer Martin Farley (martin.farley@kcl.ac.uk)
