News

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

Using measuring techniques that combine video with devices measuring particulate matter, black carbon and nitrogen oxides in real time, scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) of Berkeley Lab have verified that policies designed to reduce the emissions of particulates from trucks driving onto the Port of Oakland have been effective.The paper describing their results, by... Read more

Researchers estimate that those of us in developed countries spend 90 percent of our time indoors, which means that most of the time we are breathing air polluted by emissions from indoor sources. Providing more outdoor air ventilation can improve indoor air quality; however, energy is needed to heat, cool, humidify or dehumidify, and sometimes filter the ventilation air brought indoors from... Read more

A blog post by Liz Boatman, graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, for the Berkeley Science Review:Just up the hill at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a handful of UC Berkeley graduate and undergraduate students congregate in warehouse-like Building 60 each week to cook up two gallons of rice and beans, flavored with salt and garlic to taste. The students aren't... Read more

From Liisa O'Neill, Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs:Who knew leaks could be costing Americans $5 billion every year? And that's not water leaks—it's leaks you can't even see. Typical air duct systems, both residential and commercial, typically lose 25-40 percent of heating and cooling energy, accounting for billions added to utility bills.But what if there was a simple mist that... Read more

KQED Quest covered energy-efficient windows research at Berkeley Lab. EETD researchers Howdy Goudey and Stephen Selkowitz are quoted, along with Delia Milliorin of Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry. Read the story and listen to the audio report.... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is seeking participants for a study of air quality in California homes. The study is being conducted by scientists in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab. This project is funded by the California Energy Commission and is focused on homes with natural gas appliances. Individuals who are selected to participate and complete the... Read more

A recent Journal of Climate paper by Stanford's Mark Jacobson and John Ten Hoeve (2011) on urban heat islands and cool roofs is a useful contribution to the literature. However, their results regarding white roofs are preliminary and uncertain. Along with our own work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, other published papers have addressed the broader benefits of white roofs. In our view,... Read more

New materials are crucial to building a clean energy economy—for everything from batteries to photovoltaics to lighter weight vehicles—but today the development cycle is too slow: around 18 years from conception to commercialization. To speed up this process, a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Massachusetts... Read more

702 ABC Sydney Mornings Presenter Deborah Cameron interviews Ronnen Levinson about the Heat Island Group's cool cars study. This live radio program aired in Sydney, Australia on Monday, 7 November 2011 at 9:47 am.Listen to the 12 minute segment here.... Read more

Alex Doron, former science & technology editor of the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv, writes about the Heat Island Group's cool cars study for the Israeli energy newsletter EnergiaNews.com. Read the original Hebrew article here, or a Google translation into the language of your choice here.... Read more

The Berkeley Lab Heat Island Group addresses the role of cool roofs in cooling our planet, saving energy, and reducing carbon emissions in this response to a recent study by Stanford researchers Mark Jacobson and John Ten Hoeve. Read the academic (technical) response here (updated 4 Nov 2011 to list authors + clarify language).You may also be interested in our less technical, general-audience... Read more

The Energy Performance of Buildings group has a newly remodeled website. EPB works on problems associated with whole-building integration involving modeling, measurement, design and operation. Most of its tasks focus on the movement of air and associated penalties involving distribution of pollutants, energy and fresh air.... Read more

It's a grand challenge: develop clean, sustainable technologies that deliver a low-carbon energy future, and through innovation, create jobs, new markets, and exports, and increase America's energy security.Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made it their mission to develop low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies such as advanced materials and... Read more

Scientists in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), in cooperation with colleagues throughout the Lab, have formed a team to evaluate the impacts of low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies that are still in the laboratory. Development of these technologies is part of a Lab-wide effort called Carbon Cycle 2.0, focused on sustainable energy... Read more

TreeHugger.com features the Heat Island Group's Cool Cars project, noting the benefits of solar reflective car coatings.See the full post here.... Read more

Current standards for U.S. offices require approximately 8 liters per second (L/s) of outdoor air ventilation per person. Providing twice as much ventilation would reduce sick building syndrome symptoms (SBS) and absences, improve work performance, and provide billions of dollars in annual economic benefits in the U.S., according to a recent study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... Read more

Nearly all cars sold in California have air conditioners. Cars painted with reflective coatings stay cooler in the sun and are easier to air condition to a comfortable temperature, according to a recent study by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division."Solar reflective paints can decrease the ‘soak' temperature of the air in a car that has been parked in the sun.... Read more

The Daily Californian documents ongoing work on the global cooling benefits of reflective roofs being conducted by Heat Island Group scientists Surabi Menon, Marc Fischer, and Francisco Salamanca. Read the full article here.... Read more

Teaming up to fight against escalating energy costs, the Department of Defense, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and Philips Corporation are demonstrating advanced energy-efficient lighting controls technologies in Fort Irwin, California."The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these technologies work in typical applications and buildings at Fort Irwin, and to provide... Read more

LBNL researchers Surabi Menon and Marc Fischer lead a DOE-sponsored project to explore the effects of pollution on cool roof benefits in India.See the full Berkeley Lab feature here.... Read more

Berkeley Lab features a Heat Island Group study on the potential benefits of cool-colored car shells.View the feature here.... Read more

An antifogging coating technology developed by researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory has won a 2011 R&D 100 award. The developers of Nanostructured Antifogging Coating are EETD's Sam Mao, Vasileia Zormpa and Xiaobo Chen.The coating provides a durable, nontoxic, antifogging and self-cleaning coating for architectural glass,... Read more