News

October 5, 2010
Thousands of curious locals, including many children, ascended to the usually off-limits grounds of Berkeley's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Saturday, October 2, 2010, at the Lab’s open house.The Lab opened its gates to large numbers of members of the public for the first time in nine years for the event called "It's All About Energy!" which featured tours, talks,... Read more
September 16, 2010
Owners and operators of non-residential facilities are considering the use of on-site electrical storage or photovoltaic (PV) generation to reduce their carbon emissions and energy costs. When doing so, however, it is difficult to determine which options (or combination of options) are the most efficient and cost-effective. Vendors can help, but they are unlikely to offer an unbiased presentation... Read more
September 7, 2010
New efficiency standards proposed to take effect in 2014, announced recently by the U.S. Department of Energy, continue a 40-year trend of improving energy efficiency of this essential home appliance. The standard is a negotiated agreement between environmentalists, consumer advocates, and manufacturers. As proposed, the standard could save consumers as much as $18.6 billion over thirty years, and... Read more
August 26, 2010
The following article was published today by the University of California, San Diego. William Tschudi and other researchers from the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are participating in this energy-efficient data center demonstration project.San Diego—A consortium of researchers from the public and private sectors have embarked on a real-world... Read more
August 25, 2010
“Most energy use in personal computers takes place when no one is there,” says Bruce Nordman, a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Summing up what many probably intuit but don’t think much about, PCs are fully on and using considerable energy even if they are idle. This is also true of game consoles and... Read more
August 23, 2010
Another reason for including asthma on the list of potential health risks posed by secondhand tobacco smoke, especially for non-smokers, has been uncovered. Furthermore, the practice of using ozone to remove the smell of tobacco smoke from indoor environments, including hotel rooms and the interiors of vehicles, is probably a bad idea.... Read more
August 19, 2010
Ashok Gadgil has been named the new Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD). Dr. Gadgil has been serving as the Acting Division Director since October and replaces Arun Majumdar who was appointed as Director of the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E). Gadgil is a Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and joined EETD in 1988.... Read more
August 18, 2010
The U.S. was one of the fastest-growing wind power markets in the world in 2009, second only to China, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.... Read more
August 6, 2010
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Pacific Gas & Electric Company were awarded Connectivity Week's Buildy Award earlier this year in Santa Clara, California.According to Connectivity Week, an annual industry trade conference addressing Smart Grid technologies that was held this year in Silicon Valley, the Buildy Awards are presented to "a company or organization that has... Read more
August 3, 2010
Tien Duong, the Department of Energy's BATT Program Manager, discusses the past achievements and future of advanced battery research.Advanced battery researchers from around the U.S. gathered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory June 27 to discuss future directions for the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies (BATT) Program. BATT's Department of Energy Program Manager, Tien Duong... Read more
July 29, 2010
Mary Ann Piette, Deputy Head of EETD's Building Technologies Department, and Research Director of the Demand Response Research Center, has been elected to the Smart Grid Architecture Committee (SGAC). The Committee is responsible for creating and refining a conceptual reference model, including lists of the standards and profiles necessary to implement the Smart Grid.The Committee is part of a... Read more
July 27, 2010
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a series of initiatives underway at the Department of Energy to more broadly implement cool roof technologies on DOE facilities and buildings across the federal government. Cool roofs use lighter-colored roofing surfaces or special coatings to reflect more of the sun's heat, helping improve building efficiency by reducing cooling costs... Read more
July 20, 2010
A team of scientists at Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division, and their private-sector partners (DuPont, Bosch, 3M, and Proton Energy), have been awarded more than $1.5 million from ARPA-E to research a novel flow battery system for storing energy on the electric grid. The Berkeley Lab researchers are Venkat Srinivasan, Vince Battaglia, and Adam Weber of EETD.EETD is also a... Read more
July 16, 2010
Berkeley Lab scientists Evan Mills and Rich Brown developed the Home Energy Saver (hes.lbl.gov or HomeEnergySaver.lbl.gov), a free online tool that helps consumers identify the best, most cost-effective ways to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their homes. A powerful building energy simulation program is at the core of HES, providing each user with a customized home energy... Read more
June 7, 2010
One in five of all deaths in Bangladesh are caused by drinking water contaminated with arsenic, according to a study published recently in the medical journal The Lancet by an international team of researchers. Some 70 million people are drinking arsenic-contaminated water. The study's publication has generated renewed public interest in finding a quick, cost-effective solution to a problem that... Read more
June 2, 2010
This week, a 20-member delegation, including representatives of electricity regulatory commissions of 13 of India's 28 states, visited Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to learn about California's leading efforts on energy efficiency and renewable energy.... Read more
May 27, 2010
The marketplace for Smart Grid technology products is expanding thanks in part to an open-source communications specification developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and its research partners.... Read more
May 25, 2010
India signs on to DOE's Super-efficient Equipment and Appliances (SEAD) initiative.... Read more
May 24, 2010
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is extending the deadline to submit Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) call for projects applications until 12 p.m. (noon) Eastern time on May 28, 2010.Through CBP, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory personnel and private sector technical experts are helping building owners... Read more
May 20, 2010
John Newman, a UC Berkeley Professor of Chemical Engineering, and scientist in EETD in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been selected to receive the prestigious Acheson Award by the Electrochemical Society. This award will be given to Newman at the next meeting of the Society, in Las Vegas during the week of October 10, 2010.Newman's... Read more
May 12, 2010
The Section 1603 Treasury cash grant program appears to have stimulated incremental renewable power capacity additions in 2009, thereby supporting U.S.-based renewable energy jobs, according to a new report by Mark Bolinger, Ryan Wiser, and Naïm Darghouth, all researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.... Read more
May 11, 2010
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been awarded $8.6 million in Recovery Act funding for what the DOE calls "ambitious research projects that could fundamentally change the way the country uses and produces energy." The money will go towards four separate projects: one that will speed the development of materials that can absorb carbon... Read more
May 3, 2010
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is extending the deadline to submit Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) call for projects applications until 12 p.m. (noon) Eastern time on May 28, 2010.Through CBP, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory personnel and private sector technical experts are helping building owners... Read more
April 28, 2010
"Just think how often your fancy new mobile phone or computer has become little more than a paperweight because the battery lost its zeal for doing its job," says John Chmiola, a chemist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "At a time when cellphones can do more than computers could do at the beginning of the Clinton presidency, it would be an understatement to say that... Read more
April 26, 2010
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released a new study on the bill savings received by residential customers with solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems, under the net metering rates currently offered by California's two largest electric utilities. The report focuses on California, as it is the largest PV market in the U.S.... Read more