Colgate Palmolive Co.

Colgate Palmolive Co. is retrofitting its industrial laboratory facility, the Colgate Palmolive Global Technology Center, in Piscataway, New Jersey. The 450,000-gross-square-foot (GSF) facility provides offices and 150,000 GSF of laboratory space for research and development (R&D), pilot plants, and a data center. Colgate Palmolive is seeking to certify the Global Technology Center under the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for existing buildings (LEED^®-EB) and is focused on reducing wasteful use of energy and water, which are challenges for an R&D center where personal safety is a primary concern and often governs how resources are used.

 

To achieve the goals of reducing energy consumption and achieving LEED-EB certification, Colgate Palmolive will use an array of sustainable design strategies including reducing the number of fume hoods in the facility from 109 to 47 and more responsibly grouping instrumentation that requires 24-hour air conditioning to reduce the number of 24-hour air conditioned laboratories. Other energy reduction strategies include utilizing motion detectors to shut off lighting, non-critical equipment, and instrumentation when it is not in use, and reducing air changes in lab spaces as much as possible while still keeping the scientists safe and cool.

 

Labs21 will assist Colgate Palmolive in using the Labs21 benchmarking tool to attain credits necessary for LEED-EB certification.  Upon completion of the retrofit, Colgate-Palmolive will use electricity metering to measure savings achieved by the newly implemented energy-reduction strategies at the Global Technology Center.