News

Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu has decided not to serve a second term. Chu was Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory when he was nominated to serve as Secretary of Energy. You can read the text of his letter outlining his office's accomplishments on DOE's website."Dear Colleagues:Serving the country as Secretary of Energy, and working alongside such an extraordinary team of... Read more

The following article, which is slightly abridged, was provided by the journal Buildings Research & Information.Don Lucas, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was one of the authors of the study.Researchers in the United States are calling for a change to the U.S. building codes, following a study showing that the mandatory... Read more

A team of researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division led by Hanna Breunig has published a paper analyzing regional options for managing brine from carbon capture and sequestration projects. The research, described in a feature article here, looks at how brine brought to the surface from saline aquifers during the process of carbon sequestration might be managed and used in other... Read more

Last week, 30 members of the China National Building Waterproof Association, which represents Chinese roofing manufacturers, and Chinese government officials came to Berkeley Lab for a daylong workshop on cool roofs. Their visit took place as part of the cool-roof project of the US-China Clean Energy Research Center — Building Energy Efficiency. Participants learned about how cool roofing and... Read more

On Tuesday, 30 members of the Chinese National Building Waterproof Association, which represents Chinese roofing manufacturers, and Chinese government officials came to Berkeley Lab for a day-long workshop on cool roofs. Their visit took place as part of the cool-roof project of the US-China Clean Energy Research Center—Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE). Their day was packed with talks and a... Read more

The first four partners of FLEXLAB® (the Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings) are Philips Research North America, Daikin AC, PROSPECT Silicon Valley, and the Singapore Building and Construction Authority.FLEXLAB consists of a series of testbeds and supporting labs that facilitate development, demonstration and deployment of innovative, high-performance commercial building... Read more

On February 1, 2013, President Obama presented the 2011 National Medals of Technology and Innovation. Among the recipients was Arthur Rosenfeld, Distinguished Scientist Emeritus in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Berkeley Lab, who was recognized for his role in developing energy efficient building technologies as well as related building standards and policies.Related Video:... Read more

The GridWise® Architecture Council, or GWAC, recognized four outstanding technical papers at this year’s Grid-Interop Forum. The GWAC leaders who presented the awards say these papers help industry chart a clearer vision for smart grid interoperability, or demonstrate how the various components of an advanced electrical power system can and should work together. "The ideas represented in these... Read more

The 2013 International Concrete Sustainability Conference will take place May 6-8 in Redwood City (in the San Francisco Bay area) May 6 to 8. The 8th annual conference, hosted by the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, will provide learning and networking opportunities on the latest advances, technical knowledge, continuing research, tools and solutions for sustainable concrete... Read more

The following feature article was published on the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory News Center site:History is rife with new inventions that initially seemed beneficial but later turned out to have unforeseen environmental consequences. Chlorofluorocarbons, for example, were viewed as miracle chemicals and used in huge amounts starting in the 1960s in a myriad of ways, from refrigeration to... Read more

CalCharge in partnership with San Jose State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and CalCEF invite you to attend a briefing on:Developments in the California Energy Storage Sector and the Launch of Battery UniversityFebruary 12, 2013 6:30 pm to 8:30 pmThe Network Meeting Center 5201 Great America Parkway, Santa ClaraSpeakers Include: US Senator Jeff Bingaman Former Chair of the... Read more

Please join us for a webinar discussing the key findings of a new LBNL report entitled "The Future of Utility Customer-Funded Energy Efficiency Programs in the United States: Projected Spending and Savings to 2025." The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, presents projections of future spending on energy efficiency programs funded... Read more

When robber Willie Sutton wanted some quick cash, he went where the money was—banks. By the same principle, though more benignly, when utilities want to save energy, they head to where the demand is — including big data centers. Data centers cram energy-hogging computers into tight cages like hens in an Arkansas chicken factory. By one estimate they consumed more than 85 billion kilowatt-hours... Read more

California's residential ventilation requirements in Title 24 (the State energy code for buildings) are designed to balance healthy home ventilation with efficient energy use, but some studies suggest that whole-house ventilation systems don't always meet their expected performance in either category. Commissioning, a systematic evaluation of the installed system to identify deficiencies and offer... Read more

Alan Meier, Leader of the Electronics, Lighting and Networks Group in EETD, and Senior Executive Editor of Home Energy magazine, has written an interesting editorial on how making homes more energy-efficient can help prepare them for better survivability during future blackouts.... Read more

Berkeley Lab researchers find utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs expanding across the United States—midwest and south on the riseContact: Allan Chen (510) 486-4210, [email protected] contact: Charles A. Goldman, (510) 486-4637, [email protected] on energy efficiency programs funded by electric and natural gas utility customers will double by 2025 to about $9.5... Read more

In the quest to produce an environmentally benign renewable fuel, scientists have explored many techniques to split water molecules to produce hydrogen. Still, the current photovoltaic designs are not yet technically or economically viable. Materials research in this area has been promising, but research on the engineering design of these photoelectrochemical systems has been sparse.To advance... Read more

The White House has announced that Art Rosenfeld, Scientist Emeritus of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, will receive the National Meda of Technology and Innovation.The National Medal of Technology and Innovation was created by statute in 1980 and is administered for the White House by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Patent and Trademark Office. The award recognizes those who... Read more

News from the State of California about a former researcher at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab:Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointment.Carla Peterman, 34, of Sacramento, has been appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission. Peterman has served as a member of the California Energy Commission since 2011, where she was lead... Read more

Here are some highlights of research and events in 2012 at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division:U.S. Department of Energy Announces Berkeley Lab Funding to Develop Energy-Efficient Window with Smart Automated Shading SystemGreening of the insurance industryThe FLEXLAB® GroundbreakingAnnouncement of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR)Installed Price of Photovoltaic... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that it will fund the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to develop a highly insulated energy-efficient window system with a smart automated shading. The project’s principal investigator is Stephen Selkowitz of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), and leader of the Windows and Envelope Materials Group. Berkeley Lab... Read more

This press release is from the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore:The Building and Construction Authority inked a partnership with U.S.-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) on 16 November 2012 to build a facility for test-bedding green building technologies. The collaboration is pivotal to developing new innovations and solutions for greater energy efficiency of... Read more

This story appears on the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) website. To reduce the United States' reliance on foreign oil and lower consumer energy costs, the Department of Energy (DOE) is bringing together five national laboratories, five universities and four private firms to revolutionize next-generation battery performance. This collaboration—dubbed the Joint... Read more

The OpenADR 2.0 standard for automated demand response (DR) received a hearty vote of confidence recently when the three California investor-owned utilities announced that they will ask their technology partners to adopt it in 2013. Originally developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Demand Response Research Center, the open standard supports emergency and... Read more

Researchers at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division recently provided technical assistance funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to inform their decision-making about changes to their existing self-direct program for commercial and industrial customers. Self-direct programs are usually targeted at large industrial customers with specialized... Read more