Research Themes +
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.
Strategic Initiatives +
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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please contact ETA
Interim Communications Manager
Kiran Julin

kjulin@lbl.gov
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.

Energy-saving Tool Cited by White House

April 24, 2022

Public schools spend roughly $8 billion a year on energy bills — the second largest expense after teacher salaries. Promoting energy efficiency can be a good way to save money for school districts and increase the comfort and health of teachers and students, all while reducing pollution.

At a briefing in April 2022, the White House gave a shout out to a new tool that Berkeley Lab has developed to help manage energy saving projects.

Vice President Kamala Harris announced the Biden-Harris Action Plan for Building Better School Infrastructure to upgrade public schools with modern, clean, energy efficient facilities and transportation. The action plan activates the entire federal government in leveraging investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and American Rescue Plan to advance solutions including energy efficiency retrofits, electric school buses, and resilient design.

Berkeley Lab’s eProject eXpress (ePX) tool was cited by Vice President Harris. ePX supports energy retrofit projects for municipal and state governments, universities/colleges, schools, and hospitals (MUSH), also known as “the MUSH market”.

ePX aids in project management for energy saving performance contracts by simplifying the process of documenting, tracking, and demonstrating the ongoing value of projects. This helps leverage financing to maximize impact.

eProject eXpress is built on eProject Builder (ePB) – an online energy project data management system that has transformed the energy retrofit market. It is available for free to MUSH managers across the country, at https://eprojectbuilder.lbl.gov/login.

ePX and ePB help support the goals of DOE’s Performance Contracting National Resource Center, a hub for best practices and solutions for energy retrofits in federal and MUSH facilities.

DOE is also accelerating a range of grants, technical assistance, and lending to support school projects. These efforts include the Better Buildings Challenge and its K-12 Sector partnerships and DOE’s Loan Programs Office Renewable Energy and Efficient Energy Solicitation that can be accessed by schools to provide up to $3 billion in loan guarantees for retrofit projects.