’Freezer Challenge’ helps Hopkins labs reduce energy consumption

Participating JHU labs were able to lower their energy use by a collective 1,202 kWh per day, the equivalent of the energy needed to power 39 single family homes. A hand reaches into a freezer to pull out a lab sample in a tube. More than 1,500 ultra-low temperature lab freezers are maintained across Baltimore by Johns Hopkins University. Just a single one of these units can drain as much energy as a single-family home, collectively using millions of kilowatt-hours (kWh)-and dollars-each year. "A lot of us in research will crank them as cold as we can get them because we have this mindset that the colder, the better," explained lab manager James Leatherman. "Freezers are some of the biggest energy hogs that we have." But in recent years, a competition to make freezer use more efficient has been heating up between JHU labs. The International Laboratory Freezer Challenge is an annual competition organized by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories.