News

Berkeley Lab Researchers Use Data-Mining to Quantify Thermodynamics for Nearly 30,000 Materials. They say diamonds are forever, but diamonds in fact are a metastable form of carbon that will slowly but eventually transform into graphite, another form of carbon. Being able to design and synthesize other long-lived, thermodynamically metastable materials could be a potential gold mine for materials... Read more

EAEI's Ryan Wiser is featured on the Energy Transition Show podcast to discuss a recent Berkeley Lab/NREL report on the cost of wind power. Can wind prices keep falling, or have they bottomed out? The report, based on a survey of 163 of the world's foremost wind energy experts, examines what factors have led to a reduction in the cost of wind power. Click here to listen to the podcast.Click here... Read more

While growing up in Fresno, California, Lab researcher Christopher Payne dreamt of becoming a particle physicist.But as the only child of a single mother with a limited income, he wasn't sure how he would pay for college. Payne thought he'd have to put his scientific pursuits on hold until one afternoon, during his sophomore year of high school, he received a letter from Carleton College, a... Read more

A joint White Paper on smart grid benefits assessment released at the final workshop of U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group, Smart Grid in Shenzhen was the culmination of a three-year collaboration between multiple U.S. and China research groups. U.S. DOE leads American participation and its counterpart is the National Energy Administration. The China Energy Group's Chris Marnay attended the... Read more

ETA Researchers Michael McNeil, Wei Feng, Stephane de la Rue du Can, Nina Zheng Khanna, Jing Ke, and Nan Zhou were recently published in Energy Policy Journal. The article, Energy Efficiency Outlook in China's Urban Buildings Sector Through 2030, discusses "a bottom-up modeling approach to quantify emission reduction from efficiency programs," and its results.Abstract:This study uses bottom-up... Read more

Two projects within the Energy Technologies Area won honors at the 2016 R&D 100 Awards, an international science and technology competition. The research — Cool Roof Time Machine and Sustainable and Affordable Fluoride Removal (SAFR)—joins three other Berkeley Lab projects recognized among the past year's "most technologically significant products," according to R&D Magazine."Winning... Read more

EAEI researchers Hugo Destaillats and Tom Kirchstetter are part of a team that won a 2016 R&D100 Award for their work on the Cool Roof Time Machine project.This research establishes a method to simulate soiling and weathering of roofing material, reproducing in the lab in only a few days what would naturally take three years. This “cool roof time machine” protocol has been approved by ASTM... Read more

Research by EAEI’s Ranjit Deshmukh and Grace Wu on planning renewable energy zones in Africa was recently highlighted in Nature.Across Africa, several nations are moving aggressively to develop their solar and wind capacity. The momentum has some experts wondering whether large parts of the continent can vault into a clean future.See the full story here.... Read more

How do you speak on behalf of a living legend like Berkeley Lab's Art Rosenfeld, a particle physicist who attained international recognition as the "Godfather of Energy Efficiency?" That was the challenge faced by Ashok Gadgil, Science and Technology Deputy for Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area, on September 25 in Taipei City, Taiwan.This past June, Rosenfeld was awarded the 2016 Tang prize... Read more

In the Nature article, "Can Wind and Solar Fuel Africa's Future?" IES' Grace Wu and Ranjit Deshmukh are quoted and their research highlighted on planning renewable-energy zones in Africa. "'The study is the most comprehensive mapping effort so far for most of those countries', says Wu."The article states, "Across Africa, several nations are moving aggressively to develop their solar and wind... Read more

Effective November 1, 2016, Dr. Nan Zhou is the Group Leader of the China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The China Energy Group has worked collaboratively with researchers and policymakers in China since 1988, and has provided significant support to numerous key U.S.-China technology and policy-related initiatives to reduce energy use and emissions in China.Dr. Zhou’s... Read more

One Sunday evening, in 2007, Christian Kohler and his dinner date, Jina Shah, were presented with a most unusual check at Karma Kitchen, a monthly experiment in "pay it forward" dining served by volunteers at the Taste of the Himalayas, an Indian/Nepalese restaurant in downtown Berkeley.The price of their meal? Zero dollars. But it came with a karmic twist. They could pay it forward by paying for... Read more

Ahmet Kusoglu, of the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division, has received the Supramaniam Srinivasan Young Investigator Award of The Electrochemical Society recognizing outstanding young researchers in the field of energy technology. Kusoglu will receive his award at the 2017 Spring ECS meeting.... Read more

Berkeley Lab helps clear the way for significant reductions in the cost of solar powerThe Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) will work with four other DOE national labs in a new effort designed to accelerate the development and deployment of innovative, high-performance materials for photovoltaic modules to lower the cost of electricity generated by... Read more

On October 12, Nan Zhou, Deputy Group Leader of the China Energy Group at LBNL participated in the foundation laying ceremony for the Sino-US Low Carbon Building and Community Innovation Experimental Center, which is the office building for the LBNL-Shenzhen IBR Joint Research Center, in Longgang District, Shenzhen city. Mr. Tang Jie, previous vice mayor of Shenzhen city, Mr. Wang Hushan, deputy... Read more

"Building Below Zero," narrated by actor Ted Danson, examines buildings that produce and store more energy than they consume. In the film, Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon and ETA's Cindy Regnier discuss FLEXLAB® and its ability to test energy efficient technologies before going to the marketplace (begins at about 13:30).... Read more

On October 20th, US-China Clean Energy Research Center, Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE) hosted an workshop on “Uncovering Barriers and Solutions to Building Energy Efficiency” in Shanghai, China.The workshop sought to obtain a 360 degree perspective on the critical barriers and most promising solutions to advance building energy efficiency retrofits in China. Approximately 50... Read more

The Berkeley-Tsinghua Joint Research Center hosted the first annual Berkeley Tsinghua Energy Forum on Friday, 21 October, 2016 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Gao Hong, Vice Provost of Tsinghua University (Tsinghua), and Horst Simon of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory gave opening welcome speeches.Attendees from the three collaborating institutions—Berkeley Lab,... Read more

Ceremony in TaiwanArt Rosenfeld, widely known as the "Godfather of Energy Efficiency," was honored recently in Taiwan as the 2016 recipient of the Tang Prize for Sustainable Development.Due to health reasons, the prize was accepted on Rosenfeld's behalf by Ashok Gadgil, faculty senior scientist in the Energy Technologies Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Gadgil also delivered the Tang Prize... Read more

Prices for wind energy have hit rock bottom, thanks to technological advances and learning. Are the opportunities for significant additional cost reductions tapped out, or are much-lower costs still possible? Recent research by Berkeley Lab suggests that some energy planners, analysts, and policymakers may be underestimating both the potential for and uncertainty in wind energy cost reductions.... Read more

On October 17th and 18th at the Singyes Solar building in Zhuhai, China, the CERC-BEE program held a bilateral stakeholder meeting to formally close out phase 1.0 of its work (2010-2015) and launch phase 2.0 (2016-2020). The stakeholder meeting brought together more than 50 representatives from the U.S. and Chinese government, researcher institutes, national laboratories, private industry,... Read more

Voucher program helps bring innovative clean energy products to marketProgram contact: Jodi Bellacicco, 510-486-5445Small businesses in the clean-energy sector have another opportunity to submit Requests for Assistance (RFA) for technical assistance from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) labs through the Small Business Vouchers (SBV)... Read more

Dr. Gao Liu and Dr. Vincent Battaglia's recent achievements were acknowledged by DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy David Danielson during his recent visit to LBNL. Danielson praised the researchers for their pioneering contributions to conducting polymer binders for silicon anodes for high energy density lithium-ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries are used in most... Read more

EAEI researchers Jeff Greenblatt and Max Wei are quoted in an October 6, 2016 article in Christan Science Monitor on methane emissions from fossil fuels.... Read more

There will be a celebration going on in the Berkeley Hills this weekend, and it's not just a student party or football game.Rather, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) and from all over the world will be celebrating the second annual National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day on Saturday, October 8, 2016.National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day was created to help build awareness of... Read more