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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.

China Energy Report Featured

June 24, 2021

Key findings from the 2020 China Energy Outlook report — which outlines a path for continuous improvement of energy efficiency and emissions through 2050 in China — were recently highlighted by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

ACEEE Executive Director Steven Nadel summarized the analysis of China’s current energy policies and trends. While China has taken steps to improve its global energy footprint and is on track to meet its own five-year goals for energy and emission reduction, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise as the country’s large industrial sector remains reliant on coal.

The report is produced by the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). For more than 30 years the group has provided informative research on energy efficiency in China.

“To achieve carbon neutrality, China will need to employ an aggressive combination of measures including efficiency improvement, fuel switching, demand reduction, and further decarbonization of the power sector,” said Nan Zhou, lead of the China Energy Group and head of the International Energy Analysis Department. “Emerging technologies like carbon capture and storage and hydrogen energy will become more important in the long run. For now, there is still a lot of work cut out for us to deploy existing technologies and market-based solutions.”

China has committed to increasing its share of energy from non-fossil sources to 20% by 2030 as the country aims for peak CO2 emissions around the same time. In addition, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060. The China Energy Outlook reviews policies that will help China meet its ambitious targets, including appliance-efficiency standards, fuel economy standards, and electric vehicle incentives.

China is currently the world’s highest consumer of energy and produces 29% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Berkeley Lab scientists continue to explore new pathways for China to achieve carbon neutrality in the coming decades.