US Department of Energy announces $38m to decarbonise laboratories

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that it will invest $38m towards decarbonising four of its 17 laboratories. The initiative, “Net Zero Labs”, is currently in pilot phase and targets laboratories working on reducing emissions in what US secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm refers to as "one of the most energy-intensive, hardest-to-decarbonise federal facilities". Funding is expected to expand following the pilot and is likely to be subjected to a competitive bidding process. The DOE added: "DOE’s national labs are among the Federal Government’s most complex energy users and have demand and resilience requirements far exceeding those of a standard facility. Each lab houses heavy industrial facilities, energy-intensive data centers, reactors, and other unique infrastructure that demands large amounts of continuous power".