The Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences (TCES) is a three-story, 45,000 ft2 building on Sierra Nevada College’s Lake Campus. Located in Incline Village, Nevada, the building serves as a research laboratory for scientists and students working in the Lake Tahoe watershed region, and includes lab space, offices, classrooms, teaching labs, and various support spaces. Designed by the Collaborative Design Studio (formerly Lundahl and Associates) of Reno, and constructed by Turner Construction, the project demonstrates how an ambitious project team can successfully reduce energy usage by implementing a variety of innovative mechanical designs at minimal additional first cost.

The project goal was to build an energy-efficient environmental laboratory and teaching facility sensitive to its location and purpose, while not sacrificing safety or comfort. To accomplish this goal, the design team turned to Rumsey Engineers, an award-winning mechanical engineering firm with a proven track-record in innovative energy-efficient design. From the beginning, Rumsey Engineers said “the first and foremost priority of the design team is to provide a HVAC system that meets or exceeds all of the requirements of the building users.” According to Ryan Stahlman of the Collaborative Design Studio, “the architects, client, engineers, and general contractors worked together from day one with a very high level of commitment to create innovative solutions for the building.”

The project was awarded the USGBC LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification in May, 2007, achieving 10 points in the Optimizing Energy credit category for an estimated energy savings 60 percent better than ASHRAE baseline. In reality, the building is performing slightly better than predicted (see Actual Building Performance) and serves as an exemplary case study for high-performance laboratory design. “We were able to achieve a LEED Platinum certification in a laboratory building, on a site which receives 200 inches of snow a year, 6,500 feet above sea level, while working with one of the strictest regulatory agencies in the country for only $1.1 million [~ $23.5/sf ] more than what we would have spent for a LEED Silver building. Pretty exciting,” noted Jim Steinmann, Sierra Nevada College’s Owner Representative. The array of technologies employed at the TCES to achieve exemplary performance includes: active chilled beams, off-peak use of a cooling tower, and heat recovery from a cogeneration plant.