21 April 2026
Research funders have started to request lab sustainability measurements. Are they joining the sustainable wave or will it have an impact?
Research labs are the places where scientific questions are tested, ideas are born and discoveries are made. Although the current lab environment is very different from the romantic textbook view, most people use a vast number of resources to put in practice these principles. Growing safety regulations, increasingly complex setups and multi-disciplinary approaches resulted in sterile rooms that remain tremendously energy intensive. Today’s labs are a mix between an office with an abundance of computers, specific rooms with dedicated specialised equipment and a small bench space where the experiments are done. In addition, this experimental setup is often completed with access to core facilities, where expensive technical equipment is run in a shared fashion to allow for groundbreaking research. If you look at the whole footprint of modern universities (e.g. Copenhagen University), which includes all the students, teaching, social sciences research and others, the carbon footprint of the labs clearly stands out for the energy use, the equipment and the products bought for research. Thus, if we want to reduce the footprint of academia, a big lever is changing how labs are operated and the products they use.
Recent academic research has resulted in enormous progress, but this comes at the cost of a high carbon footprint. As the rest of society evolves with climate change in mind, labs should be operating within the to make them future-proof, but labs currently operate with unrestricted freedom. The average lab is using up to 10 times more energy than the average working place (per m2) and has a material footprint 5-10 times higher. So, the key questions are how we can do cutting-edge research within the and how can we direct research to become more sustainable.
Lab operations and products are a big lever and should be significantly lowered in the wake of the climate crisis. In addition, academia is training the leaders of tomorrow and has a moral obligation to lead the way and to show that change is possible. Initial steps have been taken due to the many new regulations (EU and UK Green Deal) and the recent increase in energy prices to make buildings and operations in academia more efficient. Interestingly in Europe, many publicly-funded institutions and universities are expected to follow these new regulations but they are making change slower because no legal binding commitments are needed.
What is currently changing is the mentality in the labs. Students and staff are initiating changes in products and equipment bought as well as changes in lab practices and research. From this manifold of initiatives, a more uniform structure has crystalised out in the form of lab certification. As mentioned in the previous blog, the LEAF program, initiated by Martin Farley at University College London (UCL), and My Green Lab Certification are the two main programs used in labs to raise awareness, induce changes and measure the resulting impact. These programs are only effective when embedded in a bigger sustainability strategy, but they help to tap into the creativity and motivation of students and staff by empowering them to act. Interestingly, funders have recognised these efforts and are now requesting that funded labs participate in one of these programs. This may sound like a small step, but since funders have a huge impact on how academic research is conducted, this will set the bar and make sustainability part of the criteria necessary to get support. This incentive will then automatically trickle down to the labs and induce changes. Whereas it is often deemed too time consuming to invest in sustainable change, these requirements from funders will now make them essential to get funding for lab research. This will ensure that future researchers will start in a different environment and initially learn about sustainable lab practices. LEAF started at UCL and has been taken up by many UK universities. Likewise, Europe is now catching up and many universities are following and creating different programmes for decarbonising labs (EMBL and Copenhagen are just two good examples of many).
What can we expect soon and what will be the changes made in the labs? Climate change mitigation is dependent on combining many measures and lab certification tools are not a quick fix. What lab certification tools can do is to convert sustainability into a currency that everybody understands (let it be a carbon footprint, material footprint or any other unit). Raising awareness, providing tools for change and questioning how we do research are the necessary foundations for reducing our footprint further. In addition, by combining these tools with funding opportunities, researchers will hopefully be tempted to opt for climate relevant and low footprint science to make sure research is future fit.
Biology is based on feedback loops, such as enzymatic reactions, populations and structures that are well regulated. LEAF and other tools can be viewed as a sort of other feedback loop to make sure the lab environmental footprint is in balance. Combined with other feedback mechanisms in education, product design, mobility and buildings, we can make academic research function within the.
Examples other funders encouraging lab certification:
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- UKRI
- EMBO
- Wellcome
- CRUK’s environmental sustainability strategy
- CRUK’s environmental sustainability in research policy
- RCS
- FWO’s sustainability travel policy (for flemish researchers) – website
- FWO’s sustainability travel policy (for flemish researchers) – pdf
- DFG
- ERC
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Green Charter