News

For the past 40 years, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) has been partnered with the window industry to help save American consumers money in energy costs by pioneering new energy-efficient windows, design tools, and window-rating systems.The lab worked closely with window manufacturers and the building industry to develop, produce, validate, and deploy energy-saving low-emissivity or "low-E"... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that 38 small businesses will collaborate with national lab researchers through the Small Business Vouchers (SBV) pilot, including four that will work with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) in the areas of bioenergy and advanced manufacturing.The innovative SBV pilot facilitates access to the DOE national labs for U.S. small businesses,... Read more

The Rocky Mountain Institute released an “Insight Brief” on how to scale home energy financing projects that cites a Berkeley Lab report, “Current Practices in Efficiency Financing: An Overview for State and Local Governments,” by ETA’s Greg Leventis and others. The Rocky Mountain Institute is an independent, non-partisan nonprofit that drives the efficient and restorative use of... Read more

Vast amounts of energy are wasted every year in the form of heat. A new project led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) seeks to efficiently capture that heat and convert it to electricity, potentially saving California up to $385 million per year.With a $2-million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC), Berkeley Lab is partnering with Alphabet... Read more

To meet skyrocketing demand for electricity, African countries may have to triple their energy output by 2030. While hydropower and fossil fuel power plants are favored approaches in some quarters, a new assessment by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that wind and solar can be economically and environmentally competitive options and can... Read more

Global Cool Cities Alliance is proud to announce the establishment of the Dr. Arthur H. Rosenfeld Urban Cooling Achievement Award to honor the legacy and impact of Dr. Arthur Rosenfeld’s advocacy for cooler buildings, cooler cities, and a cooler planet."Everywhere we work, we meet people inspired by Art who are trying to make their communities cooler, more prosperous, and healthier. I am excited... Read more

Rosenfeld, who passed away earlier this year, received the Tang Prize for Sustainable Development in 2016 for his many contributions to energy conservation. The Tang Prize Foundation made this documentary film, titled “The Godfather of Energy Efficiency” to honor Rosenfeld’s legacy.... Read more

The concept of building efficiency is easy enough to grasp: ensure comfort and functionality while using less energy. Making that happen in a given building, however, isn't always straightforward. Achieving low-energy retrofits and good operations require well-trained technicians who know how to interpret building characteristics and energy data, which is why educators are interested in learning... Read more

Berkeley Lab scientist Jeff Long and students in his research lab had come up with exciting new materials for doing gas separations very efficiently, including materials for removing CO2 from a gas. The discovery had great potential as a technology to reduce energy use by the chemical separation industry, but finding an investor would be next to impossible. So they brought their project to... Read more

U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE) researchers — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI), and ICF International (ICF) from the United States and the China Academy of Building Research (CABR) from China — recently drafted CERC's first U.S.-China joint intellectual property (IP) agreement for the development of an... Read more

It's late February, which means farmers in Central and Southern California are busy harvesting thousands of acres of citrus and winter vegetables crops. Or at least they're trying to. Monster storms have delayed harvests and damaged crops, resulting in losses of California crops that typically bring in 4 billion dollars annually. Recent policies on food waste reduction tend to focus on the waste... Read more

Using advanced imaging techniques, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been able to observe what exactly happens inside a cathode particle as lithium-ion batteries are charged and discharged.In a research project led by Berkeley Lab materials chemist Guoying Chen, the researchers uncovered important insights into reactions in cathode... Read more

The sticky residue left behind by tobacco smoke can do worse damage than stinking up furniture and discoloring walls. Exposure to thirdhand smoke leads to biological effects on weight and cell development that could be damaging to one's health, according to new research led by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).The researchers found that... Read more

Art Rosenfeld, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Distinguished Scientist Emeritus who is also known as California’s “godfather” of energy efficiency and who has been credited with being personally responsible for billions of dollars in energy savings, died January 27, 2017 at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 90.A particle physicist who decided one evening four... Read more

LBNL's China Energy Group's efforts in working with Chinese cities to promote clean energy development was recognized in EERE International's 2016 Year in Review released on January 19, 2017. "Clean energy development in Chinese cities: China is calling for cities to peak their emissions before 2030. With nearly 100 cities with more than 1 million people, the opportunity space for clean... Read more

In 2015, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley announced a partnership with Tsinghua University in Beijing. They formed the Berkeley Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change, a center helping to develop scientifically based clean energy solutions and the next generation of leaders to champion those solutions.Today, that effort received welcome... Read more

Emissions of methane—a potent climate-warming gas⎯may be roughly twice as high as officially estimated for the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of the emissions come from biological sources, such as landfills, but natural gas leakage is also an important source, according to a new study from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).The report by EAEI... Read more

India has announced a target of increasing the total renewable energy (RE) installed capacity from about 34GW in 2015 to 175GW by 2022 (including 100GW solar and 60GW wind capacity). This study assesses the technical feasibility of integrating 175 GW of renewables capacity in the Indian electricity grid, ascertains its impact on power sector investments and operations, and quantifies the... Read more

If you're thinking of buying a new car, there's a decent chance you're considering trying something greener. There's also a decent chance that some concern, big or small, has you hitting the brakes when it comes to buying an electric car.Maybe you think that you'll be tethered to charging stations and unable to take long trips, or that the battery won't last very long, or that you'll need some... Read more

Many residential and commercial buildings leak air like sieves, wasting up to 40% of their heating and cooling energy. The primary reason for this energy loss is gaps and holes that exist in buildings’ air ducts. Getting an airtight seal on every connection can be difficult; even with skillful installation and generous applications of mastic (the putty used to seal joints), leakage still occurs.... Read more

Researchers from the United States and Brazil have developed a new device that can reduce energy losses in buildings by measuring and assessing the energy performance of windows without removing them from their site. The Portable Window Energy Meter, still in prototype stage, was developed by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and from Brazil’s Federal University of... Read more

The episode featuring Jeffery Greenblatt airs on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 10 p.m. (Pacific Time). Host Ty Burrell takes to the road to see the environmental revolutions being made in electric(EV) and self-driving vehicles. Greenblatt joins other experts to talk about advancements in EVs, EV incentives and driverless technology.... Read more

Even as cities pursue energy-efficient and low-carbon transformation,they are facing the impacts of climate change, including severe storms that threaten lives and infrastructure, droughts and floods, intensified heat waves, worsening smog, and other ecological and human health impacts. How can cities be both resilient and low-carbon, such that communities “survive and thrive” in a changing... Read more

This collaborative workshop, co-sponsored by SENER, the CONACYT-SENER Energy Sustainability Fund (ESF), the Energy Working Group of the UC-Mexico Initiative, and Berkeley Lab's Mexico Energy Initiative, was held November 29 - December 1, 2016, at Casa de la Universidad de California in Mexico City. The event brought together researchers from 10 Mexican institutions, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC... Read more

The China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is pleased to announce the release of a new software tool and user guide to support city-level action on climate change: Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for Low-Carbon Cities (BEST Cities).The BEST Cities tool was co-developed by the China Energy Group of Berkeley Lab and the Energy Research Institute of China's... Read more