News

September 3, 2018
Rick Perry has awarded a Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award to the scientific and operational leadership team for the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).The center seeks to develop high-performance, low-cost energy storage technologies for transportation and the electric grid. The award-winning team includes Berkeley Lab researchers Nitash Balsara, Gerbrand Ceder, and Kristin... Read more
August 29, 2018
Two projects from Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area have been named as finalists for R&D Magazine's R&D 100 Awards, which recognize pioneering ideas in science and technology.OP1 from Opus 12, the carbon dioxide recycling startup included in Cyclotron Road's first cohort, and eProject Builder, a system that standardizes data collection for Energy Savings Performance Contract... Read more
August 22, 2018
Affordable indoor air quality monitors for the home can be worth the purchase, a recent product evaluation revealed, but all of the monitors tested by researchers were found to have either underreported or missed the presence of very small particles that can penetrate deeply into the lungs.Indoor air researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)... Read more
August 6, 2018
A newly updated online tool and guidebook from Berkeley Lab and industry partner Nexant Inc. will help utilities measure the cost and impact of power outages — a key strategic consideration as the nation works to modernize the electricity system, and especially important now during hot summer months that can strain the power grid.Read more at the Berkeley Lab News Center web site:... Read more
August 6, 2018
A consortium of national labs and nonprofit organizations has announced a call for concepts to engage the smart grid community in demonstrating visionary interoperability capabilities on how facilities with distributed energy resources, or DERs, integrate and interact with the utility grid.Read more at the Berkeley Lab News Center web site:... Read more
August 1, 2018
Adam Weber, who leads the Energy Conversion Group within Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Energy Technologies Area, was recently named to the Electrochemical Society's 2018 Class of Fellows. The fellows are chosen for their scientific achievements, leadership and service to the society.Weber's current research involves understanding and optimizing fuel-cell and electrolyzer performance and... Read more
July 27, 2018
While trying to commercialize some new battery materials that she invented, Danielle Applestone experienced firsthand the fundraising hurdles that face entrepreneurial scientists, among them the lack of connections to investors required to build a company. She'll help Cyclotron Road researchers leap some of those hurdles in her new role as Executive-in-Residence.... Read more
July 27, 2018
In a Twitter Video, Anand Gopal of the International Energy Studies Group and the Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division discusses the rapid expansion of car ownership in India, the anticipated impact this will have on greenhouse gas emissions, and the country’s move toward electric vehicles.https://twitter.com/macfound/status/1019990500319813632... Read more
July 20, 2018
Ever wonder why it’s difficult to concentrate when office temperatures rise?A July 16, 2018 segment of NPR’s "Morning edition — Heat Making You Lethargic? Research Shows It Can Slow Your Brain, Too" - cites a 2006 Berkeley Lab study, "Effect of temperature on task performance in office environment" co-authored by William Fisk of the Sustainable Energy & Environmental Systems Department,... Read more
July 19, 2018
After serving four years as Berkeley Lab's Associate Director for Energy Technologies, Ramamoorthy Ramesh will be returning to his research in ultra low-power electronics while also helping to lead a major Berkeley Lab research initiative in next-generation, energy-efficient microelectronics.This new initiative has been dubbed "Beyond Moore's Law," as it seeks the solution to what will happen when... Read more
July 19, 2018
Ravi Prasher has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Technologies at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The announcement follows an international search.Prasher, an internationally renowned scientist in the field of thermal energy science and technologies, has been director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage and Distributed Resources... Read more
July 6, 2018
The United States and China have been cooperating since 2016 under the Power Consumption, Demand and Competition Cooperation to identify solutions to advance key elements of China’s comprehensive market reforms to foster a competitive, transparent and sustainable electric power sector in China. Co-led by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources and China’s National... Read more
June 27, 2018
Energy savings programs offered by utilities—from residential lighting and appliance rebates to programs for small businesses—help ensure reliability on the grid at the most affordable cost, according to a comprehensive study just released by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."At an average cost of just 2.5 cents to save a kilowatt-hour, energy... Read more
June 27, 2018
Cyclotron Road alumna Kendra Kuhl is one of five “climate change visionaries” advancing world-changing ideas and technologies that were featured recently in the New York Times. Kuhl is the chief technical officer of Opus12, which has developed a device that turns waste CO2 into chemicals and fuels. Read the full New York Times article.... Read more
June 21, 2018
A team led by ETA’s Robert Kostecki is one of 14 awardees whose research is focused on reducing the cost of solar-thermal desalination and helping the technology reach new markets, including areas that are not connected to the electric grid. Read the full announcement on the DOE energy.gov website.... Read more
June 19, 2018
Last month, the US Green Building Council (USGBC), Johnson Controls, and the World Resources Institute (WRI) hosted the “Forum on National-Subnational Collaboration for Building Energy Efficiency,” in Mexico City. The Building Efficiency Accelerator (BEA) event brought together stakeholders from government, industry, development banks, and international cooperation agencies to discuss the role... Read more
June 18, 2018
Release of Report of U.S.-China Power Consumption, Demand and Competition Cooperation: Policy Recommendations for the Pilots in Guangdong, Jilin, Jiangsu, and ShanghaiThe United States and China have been cooperating since 2016 under the Power Consumption, Demand and Competition Cooperation to identify solutions to advance key elements of China's comprehensive market reforms to foster a... Read more
June 15, 2018
Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab's Electricity Markets and Policy Group was named one of Wind Power Monthly's influential people of 2017.Wiser is the lead author of Berkeley Lab's annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which can be found at https://emp.lbl.gov/wind-technologies-market-report/Read the full article at www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1448419/influential-interesting-2017... Read more
June 6, 2018
Odón De Buen, Director General of Mexico’s National Commission for the Efficient Use of Energy (CONUEE) and Andrew McAllister, Commissioner of the California Energy Commission (CEC), led the California-Mexico Energy Efficiency Webinar held in early June to discuss current activities supporting energy efficiency and opportunities for collaboration. The webinar, hosted by CEC in partnership with... Read more
June 5, 2018
A study involving Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been named among the best of 2017 in a new ranking from Environmental Science & Technology, one of the leading journals in its field. "High-Resolution Air Pollution Mapping with Google Street View Cars: Exploiting Big Data," was the top environmental technology paper in ES&T's roundup, which also named top papers in three other... Read more
June 5, 2018
About $20 billion worth of energy leaks out of windows in the United States each winter – and that’s with double-paned insulating windows installed on a majority of buildings. The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is now working with manufacturers to bring to market a “super window” that is at least twice as insulating as 99 percent of the... Read more
May 31, 2018
Indoor air quality in schools often fails to meet minimum standards, and student performance is clearly diminished when ventilation rates are low, according to a recent analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.Elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide have been documented in schools across the U.S., Europe and Asia, the study finds. "These CO2 data indicate a widespread failure to provide the... Read more
May 31, 2018
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and India Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan recently launched a Strategic Energy Partnership that includes a significant intellectual contribution by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Building Innovation: Guide For High-Performance Energy-Efficient Buildings in India, is a document packed with best practices for smart,... Read more
May 30, 2018
Scientists can computationally predict all sorts of novel materials but, until now, had no way of knowing if it could actually be synthesized. Berkeley Lab researchers Muratahan Aykol, Shyam Dwaraknath, Wenhao Sun, and Kristin Persson have now found a chemically sensitive, rigorous thermodynamic limit to determine when a material can’t be made, a discovery which could greatly accelerate... Read more
May 10, 2018
Cyclotron Road, an entrepreneurial technology fellowship program based in Berkeley, CA, announced its fourth cohort today. Comprising 13 PhD-level scientists and engineers, these fellows will spend the next two years embedded at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), advancing their technology innovations from promising concepts to first products.... Read more