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Box: Scoping Estimate of the $10 billion U.S. R&D Facility Energy Bill
There is no official estimate of energy-use in research facilities. National surveys such as
those conducted by DOE (x) do not break these facilities out into a separate category.
Here we present a rough scoping estimate for private- and public-sector research facilities
in the United States based on available information, and current commercial-sector
average energy prices of $0.098/kWh for electricity and $13/GJ for fuel. Given the
magnitude of the result, a more detailed analysis is clearly warranted and would
presumably be of strategic value to those funding the R&D enterprise as well as
individual scientists trying to accomplish the maximum amount of work within a
constrained budget.
Laboratories: Prior work indicates an expenditure of $4.2 billion per year for U.S.
laboratory fume hoods as of 2004, based on bottom-up modeling (6), or $5.8 billion to
reflect present-day energy prices. This is combined with $2.4 billion for lab plug loads
and lighting per the end-use breakdowns from the EPA/DOE Laboratories for the 21St
Century benchmarking database, which indicate that 29% of total lab energy is
attributable to these end uses (xi).
Computing: A detailed estimate indicates total electricity consumption for U.S. servers
and data centers at 61 billion kilowatt-hours as of 2006 (8), including energy used
directly by the IT equipment and associated space-conditioning systems. This translates
to $5.9 billion at today's energy prices. The portion attributable to the research
applications is $1.2 billion, based on a stipulated 20% fraction.
Clean environments: In the absence of any prior estimates, we refer to the estimated
ratio of cleanroom to laboratory-type facility energy for California (7), and scale this
value to the U.S., for an estimate of $8.1 billion per year for all cleanrooms. The portion
attributable to research applications is $1.6 billion, based on a stipulated 20% fraction.
The sum of these estimates is $11 billion, which, given the uncertainties, forms the basis
of our conclusion that energy-use for high-tech research facilities in the United States is
on the order of $10 billion. Assuming a national-average emissions factor of 0.959 kg
CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour, this corresponds to approximately 80 million tonnes of
CO2-equivalent emissions each year. Due to the absence of data, this does not include
transportation energy use associated with research facilities (or related travel) or the
energy associated with energy use of specialized facilities such as particle accelerators,
electron microscopes, medical equipment, or transportation energy associated with
research. Some of this is probably captured in the energy expenditures in "Energy-
intensive" federal facilities, which was estimated at $0.9 billion in 2005 (xii).MS: es-2008-01496g
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Mills, Evan. Sustainable Scientists, article, December 31, 2008; Berkeley, California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc925977/m1/3/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.