La Maestra Community Health Centers is an award-winning not-for-profit organization that has been serving low-income and immigrant communities for 19 years.

Ongoing construction and major retrofitting of hospitals in California, driven by aging facilities and the demand for new medical technologies, offers an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically improve the energy performance of healthcare facilities for decades to come.



The Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences (TCES) is a three-story, 45,000 ft2 building on Sierra Nevada College's Lake Campus that demonstrates how an ambitious project team can successfully reduce energy usage by implementing a variety of innovative mechanical designs at minimal additional first cost.

It's no easy undertaking to design a high-performance laboratory building that uses very little energy while meeting comfort, health, safety and programmatic requirements. Laboratory buildings typically have very energyintensive heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems that operate 24 hours per day and use 100 percent outside air.

The Pharmaceutical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, is a 123,000-square-foot laboratory and office building completed in 1999. Among the energy efficiency measures included in the building are systems for limiting energy waste associated with its 92 fume hoods and its air handling, space conditioning, and lighting systems.

Using the integrated energy design approach, designers can cost-effectively lower building operating costs while improving workers' comfort and boosting productivity.

Not all energy-efficiency measures are appropriate for all building types, but some are especially useful for particular buildings. This Design Brief reminds designers and builders of opportunities they should consider in each of their projects.

A few building simulation runs early in a project can lead to design solutions that, though they appear simple, significantly improve building energy performance.

Laboratory-type facilities represent an important segment of the building stock, especially when considered in terms of energy intensity and overall energy consumption. According to researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL), there are more than 50 million square feet of laboratory-
type space in California alone. Energy intensities are often five times higher than
those found in other building types such as offices.