by Jeff Heil, Iain Siery, and Christopher Lynch, Arcadis
A few years ago at the ISPE’s Facilities of the Future conference, something shifted. Whereas previous gatherings had touched on sustainability as one topic among many, the agenda had transformed almost overnight. Sessions were devoted to decarbonization, carbon footprints, and the future of energy in life sciences manufacturing. Sustainability was becoming a line item, not just an operational goal.
For biotech and pharmaceutical companies, natural gas has long powered steam generators, process heaters, and HVAC systems that keep manufacturing operations running. It is reliable, relatively cheap, and deeply embedded in facility infrastructure. It is also, however, increasingly incompatible with the net-zero commitments that are becoming more popular among life sciences companies.
The push to go all-electric is real and growing. It’s also considerably harder than it might seem. It is not as simple as swapping one energy source for another. The switch to electric means rethinking how a facility produces, moves, and consumes energy. To be successful, organizations must use careful planning and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Most importantly, they have to be willing to invest in infrastructure that may not deliver a traditional ROI.
If your organization is beginning to consider eliminating natural gas, here are a few things you need to understand first.
Why natural gas is harder to replace than it looks
Here’s a statistic that may surprise many stakeholders: Electrifying a life sciences facility can as much as double its electrical demand.
Why? Natural gas is not a marginal energy source in most biotech and pharma facilities. It accounts for approximately half of total energy consumption, powering heating systems essential to manufacturing processes, building climate control, and utilities production. When you remove natural gas and replace those functions with electricity, that energy load does not disappear. It transfers entirely to the electrical grid.
For a typical large manufacturing site, that means coordinating with your utility provider to supply nearly twice the electrical capacity it currently delivers. Often this is at medium voltage levels ranging from 12,470V to 34,500V. Larger electrified loads, such as electrode steam boilers for example, may require an additional voltage level infrastructure in a facility's distribution system. That means new transformers, new protective equipment, and new physical space to house it all.
So successful transition demands early engagement with your electric utility, well before design begins. Utilities may need to upgrade their own distribution systems, transfer loads, or make changes to their network to support increased demand. Those changes take time and are entirely outside your organization's control. The earlier you start the conversation, the better.
Stop wasting the heat you have
Before reaching for new electric systems, the most effective step any organization can take is to reduce the energy demand that needs to be replaced in the first place.
Life sciences facilities, almost by design, generate significant amounts of waste heat. Manufacturing environments require heavy ventilation. Facilities working with solvents, chemicals, and biological agents must continuously exhaust large volumes of conditioned air. Typically, that exhaust just exits the building. The facility pays to heat or cool the air, runs it through the process space, and dumps it to atmosphere. The energy is gone.
There are ways to recover that energy and put it back to work, however. For example, consider heat exchangers in exhaust streams. That’s a proven, well-understood system deployed in industrial settings for decades. In the context of maximizing electric , it becomes a much more important strategy. After all, every unit of heat recovered is one fewer unit of electrical energy to be generated and supplied.
Another important strategy is to map heat sources and sinks across an entire facility, and then to route waste heat directly to where it is needed. In practice, this means identifying where heat is being generated (chillers, process cooling systems, ventilation exhausts) and where it is being consumed (process utilities, HVAC heating), then designing infrastructure to connect them. This cross-system integration is where the real engineering challenge and the real opportunities for savings may lie.
Make process utilities and mechanical systems talk to each other
Historically, process utility systems and mechanical utility systems in life sciences facilities have been designed and operated in isolation. There are valid reasons for that separation: For example, risk management, regulatory compliance, and the fact that the two systems have different owners within the organization, different performance criteria, and different vendors.
Going electric gives facilities a compelling reason to reconsider that siloed approach.
Consider a facility where the HVAC chilled water system produces heat as a byproduct of cooling. In a traditional plant, that heat is rejected to atmosphere via cooling towers. By modifying the operating conditions of those chillers to produce condenser water at a slightly elevated temperature, that waste heat becomes a usable input on the process side. A heat pump then takes that fluid at roughly 45 degrees Celsius and boosts it to approximately 90 degrees Celsius, which is a useful temperature for process heating applications. The cooling tower rejection disappears. The process boiler load shrinks.
This is not just theory. It is being engineered and implemented on live projects right now.
A few important caveats apply here. Heat pumps operate most efficiently within a defined temperature range. As process temperatures deviate from that range, particularly on the high end, efficiency drops and capital costs rise. For very high-temperature applications, it may be necessary to combine a heat pump with additional equipment such as mechanical vapor recompression. These are solvable engineering problems, but they require careful equipment selection and close collaboration with multiple vendors at once.
It’s also important here to consider timing. Heat is not always available when it is needed. The mismatch between when waste heat is generated and when process heat is required can undermine an otherwise well-designed system. Thermal energy storage provides the buffer that makes such integrated systems practical in the real world.
On-site renewables are a complement, not a solution
No discussion of transitioning to electricity would be complete without also addressing the important topic of on-site renewable energy.
Photovoltaic solar arrays require a lot of land. One acre of panels can generate between 5,000 and 12,000 kilowatt-hours annually under favorable conditions. A typical biotech or pharmaceutical manufacturing facility consumes energy at a scale that would require many acres of solar panels for any meaningful offset. That kind of space is rarely available in constrained urban or suburban campuses. Wind energy faces similar land constraints, and is compounded by noise, flicker, and regulatory setback requirements that can make on-site wind impractical for most life sciences sites.
Of course, on-site renewables should be considered wherever feasible. Rooftop solar, parking canopy installations, and available ground space are all good approaches. But they should be understood as a complement to a broader electrification strategy, not the foundation of one.
Most organizations might find it preferable to follow one of two procurement-based options. The first is purchasing green electricity directly from the utility provider, which increasingly offers renewable energy tariffs. The second is acquiring Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), which support the generation of renewable energy on the broader grid. Hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) is also worth noting as a lower-carbon alternative fuel for on-site standby diesel generators, because it allows organizations to reduce backup power carbon intensity without replacing existing equipment.
Best practices for making the switch
For organizations who are ready to commit to converting from gas to electric, success comes down to a consistent set of practices. Here are the fundamentals:
Understand your temperatures and loads first. Before any equipment is selected or design work begins, know the temperatures required by your process and mechanical systems, and the size of the loads at those temperatures, measured in kilowatts. These two variables determine which electrified systems are technically feasible, which are efficient, and which are simply not worth pursuing.
The most valuable work at this stage could be a structured cross-disciplinary workshop. Here, mechanical engineers and process engineers map heat sources and sinks across the site, identifying integration opportunities at the boundaries between systems. Without that conversation, opportunities are missed and problems may come up late in the game.
Design for the facility's full life, not just today's needs. Electrification capital costs are significant. For some projects, the sustainability premium can be 8% of direct costs (or more) over traditional construction approaches. Phased implementation, where systems are installed in stages as the site grows and capital becomes available, is a common-sense approach. But phasing must be planned, not improvised.
Systems installed today must be compatible with systems added in five or fifteen years. Equipment must be supported by vendors over the facility's full life cycle. Choosing a niche system that a manufacturer may not support decades from now introduces long-term risk that outweighs any short-term cost advantage.
Engage utility providers early. As noted before, electrification roughly doubles a facility's electrical demand. Getting that capacity to the site reliably demands active, sustained coordination. The same applies to water utilities, since some electrified systems consume water in ways that traditional natural gas infrastructure does not.
Start those conversations at the earliest possible stage. Revisit them regularly as the design evolves. The utility should be treated like a project stakeholder, not a vendor.
Get buy-in at every level of the organization. This is the success factor that’s most often underestimated and most likely to derail a project. Sustainability-focused roles at the corporate level, and among facilities engineers and operations teams do not always have the same priorities. Each group has a legitimate perspectives, and they need to be aligned before any major commitments are made.
The same facility that has secured a large sustainability capital budget at the board level can still struggle if site operations teams are not included in planning from the start. Buy-in takes deliberate, continued effort.
Quantify before you commit. A qualitative discussion of heat recovery and electrification sounds good, but a quantified site energy balance is what makes a project real. Until you know exactly how much heat is available, how much heat is consumed, and when each occurs across the operating cycle, you can’t design reliable systems. Invest in that analysis early, because everything else is built on it.
The future of decarbonization
Among industry experts, the consensus is that decarbonization is a trend that’s here to stay. Client demand for all-electric, low-carbon facilities has accelerated substantially in recent years and continues to grow, largely independent of changes in policy and regulation. Companies that have made net-zero commitments are holding to them. The question for most life sciences organizations isn’t whether to pursue electrification, but when and how.
The honest answer? Sooner than you think, because lead times can be long. Utility upgrades, equipment procurement, phased construction, and commissioning of complex integrated systems take years.
Facility owners successfully navigating this transition aren’t just replacing gas boilers with electric boilers and calling it job done. They are rethinking how heat moves through their buildings and their processes. They’re finding integration opportunities to reduce demand before they switch the fuel source, and they’re building the organizational and stakeholder buy-in necessary to see the job through to completion.
About the authors
Iain Siery, PE, is a mechanical subject matter expert with more than 20 years of experience in building design. He specializes in mechanical utilities, HVAC, industrial ventilation, and plumbing systems for critical environments supporting R&D and manufacturing. His portfolio includes major projects across the pharmaceutical, biotech, laboratory, food and beverage, institutional, research, government, and commercial sectors. In addition to serving as a technical subject matter expert in HVAC, steam, and central plant design, Iain is passionate about mentoring teams and advancing discipline leadership.
Chris Lynch, PE, LEED AP, is an experienced electrical engineer specializing in the design of power distribution systems for a wide range of industries, including pharmaceutical, biologics, high-purity chemical, industrial, petrochemical, laboratory, commercial, office, and utility facilities. He has led the development of conceptual, preliminary, and detailed construction documents and brings deep knowledge of applicable codes and cGMP requirements for pharmaceutical, biologics, and high-purity manufacturing environments.
Jeff Heil, PE, Director, Process Technologies, is a senior leader focused on shaping, winning, and delivering complex, high-value projects across the Industrial Manufacturing & Technology sector, with particular expertise in Life Sciences and pharmaceutical manufacturing.