News

China’s Green & Low-Carbon Development Think Tank Partnership (GDTP) Annual Conference was held in Beijing on January 24, 2015. About 100 experts and institution representatives participated in the conference, discussed future GDTP efforts, and witnessed the formal establishment of the GDTP Advisory Council. Dr. He Jiankun, former executive vice president of Tsinghua University and convener... Read more

10 years ago, Susan Amrose remembers passing a class that Berkeley Lab’s Ashok Gadgil was teaching on Design for Sustainable Communities. She sat in on the first class, and wound up staying the semester. Today she teaches the course and has teamed with Gadgil and Robert Kostecki to create an electrochemical arsenic remediation prototype.... Read more

The China Energy Group hosted its 7th annual Chinese New Year Party on February 20th. Close to 100 people from across the Lab’s many departments came to celebrate the Year of the Ram. The event also gave the China Energy Group an opportunity to thank everyone for the work they do that supports our efforts. Our guests came from the Director’s office, Environmental Technologies Area office,... Read more

Career Spotlight: Research Scientist and Mechanical EngineerVi Rapp is a research scientist with Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area. She has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and focuses her research on improving combustion systems. One aspect of her work is designing cleaner, more efficient cookstoves.Click the link below to see the full story on KQED's Quest program.... Read more

On Feb. 12, 2015, China National Energy Conservation Center (NECC) invited Dr. Bo Shen from LBNL to give a lecture onInnovative mechanisms of international energy efficiency policy and its implication on China. Dr. Shen elaborated international leading experiences and mature practices on energy efficiency through case studies from the perspectives of policy making and mechanism innovation. Dr.... Read more

On January 29, 2015, the energy service company (ESCO) Committee of the China Energy Conservation Association (EMCA) hosted the U.S.-China Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) Symposium at China People’s Palace in Beijing. The U.S.-China EPC Symposium was held as part of the U.S.-China ESCO project under the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) framework. The U.S. State Department,... Read more

Private-public collaboration through CalCharge benefits companies as well as government researchers. Venkat Srinivasan of Berkeley Lab and Jeff Anderson of CalCharge will be speaking at AAAS in a panel titled, "Next-Generation Batteries for Mobile Devices and the Grid." (Saturday, 14 February 2015: 1:30 PM-4:30 PM, Room 230B, San Jose Convention Center) The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... Read more

Berkeley Lab and UNC-Chapel Hill’s discovery of nonflammable electrolyte gets VC funding. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) battery scientist Nitash Balsara has worked for many years trying to find a way to improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries. Now he believes he has found the answer in a most unlikely material—a class of compounds that has mainly been used for... Read more

Since the polio vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, one of the most dreaded diseases in history has been all but eradicated. Are there other scientific breakthroughs that could have an equally transformative impact on global human development, and if so, what are they?When Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies (LIGTT) tried to answer this... Read more

Largest-ever study quantifies the value of rooftop photovoltaics on homes that sold across eight states and 12 yearsA multi-institutional research team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkley Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, universities, and appraisers found that home buyers consistently have been willing to pay more for... Read more

Tihomir (Tica) Novakov, a Serbian- American physicist, passed away as a result of natural causes at the age of 85 in Kensington, California on January 2, 2015. Dr. Novakov was a distinguished member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Novakov was born in Sombor, Serbia on March 16, 1929. His father was a veterinarian and... Read more

Differences in local market conditions and policies, and other factors, particularly the size of the system, can lead to wide disparities in what consumers across the United States pay to install solar energy systems on their homes or small businesses, according to a recent study published by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This translates into... Read more

The Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies (BATT) Program is the premier fundamental research program in the U.S. for developing high-performance, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs). BATT is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Vehicle Technologies. BATT investigators in top research universities and institutions work... Read more

The Electricity Markets and Policy Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has released a new policy brief titled "Estimating Customer Electricity Savings From Projects Installed by the U.S. ESCO Industry." The U.S. energy service company (ESCO) industry has a well-established track record of delivering substantial energy and dollar savings in the public and institutional... Read more

The following article from the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy describes its efforts to maximize the impacts of the research it funds. Yaw Agyeman, in EETD's Sustainable Federal Operations Group, helped develop and leads training in retrospective impact analysis, which EETD and DOE use to assess how research in energy efficiency and renewable energy has... Read more

In November 2014, The United States and China made a renewed and expanded commitment to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC). This will include:Extending the CERC mandate for an additional five years from 2016-2020;Renewing funding for the three existing tracks: building efficiency, clean vehicles, and advanced coal technologies with carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS);... Read more

An excerpt from a U.S. Department of Energy blog:"...dramatic changes are occurring in our nation’s energy mix, many of which demand a more technologically advanced electric grid. Increasing use of renewable energy sources, risks of cyber and physical attacks, and aging infrastructure create uncertainty of the current grid’s long-term ability to provide the services demanded of it. These... Read more

The Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies (BATT) Program is the premier fundamental research program in the U.S. for developing high-performance, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs). BATT is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Vehicle Technologies. BATT investigators in top research universities and institutions work... Read more

Berkeley Lab scientists, including the Heat Island Group's Dr. Ronnen Levinson, each presented one of the Lab's 8 Big Ideas in front of a packed house in Oakland, CA on 8 October, 2014. His presentation, "Cool Roofs through Time and Space", featured the new California Cities Albedo Map. Related Video: https://youtu.be/n-2ZNCzYimw... Read more

China Energy Group Affiliate and retired Berkeley Lab Staff Scientist Chris Marnay organized and led the Tianjin 2014 Symposium on Microgrids in Tianjin, China on November 13-14. This was Dr. Marny's tenth Microgrid Symposium as chairman. This symposium is a series that dates back to the first on the U.C. Berkeley Campus in 2005, with others in Montreal, Nagoya, Kythnos Is., Greece, San Diego,... Read more

Fault Detection and Diagnostics Moves into the Buildings Sector When a commercial building doesn't work properly, its occupants suffer, it wastes energy, and expensive equipment can fail if a small problem spirals out of control. The buildings industry has taken big steps in recent years towards better systems to monitor and control energy use in buildings, but it is still struggling to develop... Read more

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which result from the burning of fossil fuels, also reduces the incidence of health problems from particulate matter (PM) in these emissions.A team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), RAND Corp., and the University of Washington, has calculated that the... Read more

Soon, for the first time, a group of researchers will connect a fleet of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) to the electricity grid in Southern California in a test of the connected fleet's ability to provide the grid with power and excess storage capacity.The fleet of 42 PEVs at the Los Angeles Air Force Base (LA AFB) will be controlled by a sophisticated system using technologies developed by... Read more

On Nov. 11, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping made a historic U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change outlining each country’s commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation on climate change and to announce post-2020 actions in support of the effort to transition to low-carbon economies.Regarding China’s announced target of peaking of carbon dioxide (CO2)... Read more

Building on strong progress during the first six years of the Administration, today President Obama announced a new target to cut net greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. At the same time, President Xi Jinping of China announced targets to peak CO2 emissions around 2030, with the intention to try to peak early, and to increase the non-fossil fuel share of all energy to... Read more