News

A report released by the California Council for Science and Technology examines pathways for achieving California’s aggressive greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of 80% below the 1990 level in 2050 through electricity generation from fossil fuel combustion with CO2 capture and sequestration (“fossil/CCS”), or renewable energy technologies (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, hydro, etc.).... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been selected to lead a new joint U.S.-India research center focusing on energy efficiency technologies for buildings. It is one of three consortia that will make up the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC).Berkeley Lab’s U.S.-India Joint Center for Building Energy Research and Development (CBERD) will... Read more

An article just published in Issues in Science and Technology, a journal of the National Academy of Sciences, summarizes what California will need to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below the 1990 level. Jane Long, co-chair of the California’s Energy Future committee, and Jeff Greenblatt, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, discuss the... Read more

June 5 to 7, 2012 at the Claremont Hotel, Berkeley, California. To register for the conference please go to the registration page. Conference registration fee is $430. As an essential part of understanding the contribution that materials science will make to accelerating progress toward scalable electrochemical energy storage systems, conference attendees are encouraged to submit poster abstracts... Read more

In 2011 the City of Boulder, Colorado enacted its “SmartRegs” ordinances that require all single family and multifamily rental properties to meet a minimum energy efficiency standard by January 2019. The SmartRegs initiative is designed to help the city achieve its ambitious carbon emissions reduction goals and to improve the quality, safety, and marketability of Boulder’s rental housing... Read more

A new assessment of wind energy in India by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that the potential for on-shore wind energy deployment is far higher than the official estimates — about 20 times and up to 30 times greater than the current government estimate of 102 gigawatts. This landmark finding may have significant impact on India’s renewable energy strategy as it attempts to... Read more

When the next “big one” hits Northern California, chances are good that the power will be knocked out across large swaths of the Bay Area. But one place that is likely to stand unaffected is Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, the third largest jail in the state and fifth largest in the country. If all goes according to plan, this “mega-jail,” housing about 4,000... Read more

Cap and trade programs to reduce emissions do not inherently provide incentives to induce the private sector to develop innovative technologies to address climate change, according to a study just published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.In fact, said author Margaret Taylor, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who conducted the study... Read more

General registration is now open for the Beyond Lithium Ion V Conference! Click here to register for the conference at the Early Bird rate of $380. The Early Bird deadline is March 31, 2012 so please be sure to register soon. After the Early Bird deadline conference registration will increase to $430. As an essential part of understanding the contribution that materials science will make to... Read more

A new study from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), published in Nature Climate Change, has quantitatively demonstrated that black carbon—also known as soot, a pollutant emitted from power plants, diesel engines and residential cooking and heating, as well as forest fires—reduces the reflectance of snow and ice, an effect that increases the rate of global... Read more

At some point this year, after NASA's rover Curiosity has landed on Mars, a laser will fire a beam of infrared light at a rock or soil sample. This will "ablate" or vaporize a microgram-sized piece of the target, generating a plume of ionized gas or plasma, which will be analyzed by spectrometers to identify the target's constituent elements. Future Mars rovers, however, will be able to do even... Read more

Solar energy has long captured the hearts and minds of U.S. university students, with the Solar Decathlon biennially celebrating their achievements on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. But what of energy efficiency, the workhorse for cost-effective carbon emission reductions? Can we inspire the nation’s brightest minds to pursue radical efficiency improvements in the appliances and equipment... Read more

Ashok Gadgil, Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, answers some questions about the LBNL Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies.What exactly is LIGTT?The LBNL Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies is a new institute to develop and deploy new technology to fight poverty around the globe using sustainable methods.... Read more

The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is establishing the new LBNL Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies (LIGTT) to close the innovation gap for developing countries and create a pipeline of demand-driven technologies in the key areas for international development, including fuel-efficient cook-stoves, safe drinking water and access to... Read more

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles could greatly reduce dependence on finite petroleum resources, reduce CO2 emissions and provide new scenarios for grid operation. Although new electric vehicles with advanced lithium ion batteries are being introduced, further breakthroughs in scalable energy storage, beyond current state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries, are necessary before the full... Read more

One of the quickest, most inexpensive paths to increasing gas mileage and reducing vehicle carbon dioxide emissions is to reduce vehicle weight, rather than investing in new, expensive vehicle technologies. Concerns that reducing vehicle weight will result in increased fatalities from vehicle accidents have hindered past efforts to substantially increase fuel economy standards, but recent research... Read more

Ashok Gadgil, the Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has won the Lifetime Achievement award of the Zayed Future Energy Prize. The award was announced in Abu Dhabi at the Zayed award ceremony today.The $3.5 million Zayed Future Energy Prize, managed by Masdar in Abu Dhabi, recognizes and rewards innovation,... Read more

Developed by Berkeley Lab Scientists to Help Building Managers Get Started Using These Systems to Increase Building Energy EfficiencyThe Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and U.S. Department of Energy have released The Energy Information Handbook: Applications for Energy-Efficient Buildings Operations. This free book guides commercial building owners and operators who have no experience with... Read more

The Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA) has launched a Cool Roofs and Pavements Toolkit to help cities, regions, organizations, and building owners develop and deploy successful cool surface initiatives. The Toolkit is an on-line resource that GCCA will build up over time with targeted tools for a range of audiences. It is being launched with the publication of a primer and implementation guide,... Read more

Call it the bright side of globalization: progressive solutions midwifed by transnational interconnections. From her office in Berkeley, Calif., Andree Sosler, executive director of the Darfur Stoves Project, coordinates the distribution of cheap, clean, super fuel-efficient cooking stoves to women in the Darfur region of Sudan. Designed by Berkeley scientists, partially manufactured in Mumbai,... Read more

Ed Vine, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division is the editor of a special issue of the journal Energy Efficiency focusing solely on the evaluation of energy efficiency (2012: Volume 5 Number 1). The papers published in the issue are a subset of those delivered at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference held in Europe in 2010.The issue's introduction, by Vine... Read more

The Darfur Stoves Project began in 2005 after a trip by Lab researchers. They were looking at existing wood-burning stoves and what could be done to make them more efficient, requiring less firewood. On this latest trip, Debra found that the idea of U.S.-based researchers thinking about helping an African country came as a surprise:"The group was pleased that I was sharing my first coffee ceremony... Read more

A study released today by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identifies steps that energy efficiency program managers can take to deliver significant savings on home energy bills to middle-income households."Middle-income households have been hit hard by the recent recession, and sagging home prices have undermined the traditional reliance of middle-income... Read more

The Department of Defense’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) recently announced the funding of 27 projects to demonstrate emerging energy technologies on military installations through its Installation Energy Test Bed initiative.Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) and partner organizations were awarded two of... Read more

Congratulations to Francis Rubinstein and Dennis DiBartolomeo of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, and Yao-Jun Wen of Philips Research North America. Their paper, "Co-simulation Based Building Controls Implementation with Networked Sensors and Actuators," won the Best Paper Award at the recent BuildSys 2011 meeting. Buildsys 2011 was the 3rd ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)... Read more