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Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
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About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

Ashok Gadgil to Receive the Bayh-Dole Coalition’s American Innovator Award

September 4, 2024

Ashok Gadgil, a retired faculty senior scientist in the Energy Technologies Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and a UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was featured in the Bayh-Dole Coalition's second annual "Faces of American Innovation" report for his role in developing a powerful light-based water disinfector. Gadgil will accept the Bayh-Dole Coalition’s American Innovator Award on September 18 in Washington, D.C.

“I am greatly pleased and honored to receive this recognition,” said Gadgil. “This award truly illustrates how the Bayh-Dole Act can benefit society. It empowers researchers receiving federal research funding to push the inventions to commercialization and societal impact.”

With the help of funding from USAID and the U.S. Department of Energy, Gadgil developed and refined UV Waterworks — a portable device that can purify about four gallons of water per minute. Berkeley Lab patented the early-stage technology to ensure the private sector had an incentive to commercialize it. Gadgil then helped found the company WaterHealth International, which licensed the invention for further development.

"Dr. Gadgil's revolutionary work has helped provide millions of people around the world with access to clean, reliable drinking water," said Joseph P. Allen, executive director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. "But without the Bayh-Dole Act, which granted universities the right to patent and license publicly funded discoveries made on their campuses, this literally life-saving innovation might not have been possible."