News

Alex Doron, former science & technology editor of the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv, writes about the Heat Island Group's cool cars study for the Israeli energy newsletter EnergiaNews.com. Read the original Hebrew article here, or a Google translation into the language of your choice here.... Read more

The Berkeley Lab Heat Island Group addresses the role of cool roofs in cooling our planet, saving energy, and reducing carbon emissions in this response to a recent study by Stanford researchers Mark Jacobson and John Ten Hoeve. Read the academic (technical) response here (updated 4 Nov 2011 to list authors + clarify language).You may also be interested in our less technical, general-audience... Read more

The Energy Performance of Buildings group has a newly remodeled website. EPB works on problems associated with whole-building integration involving modeling, measurement, design and operation. Most of its tasks focus on the movement of air and associated penalties involving distribution of pollutants, energy and fresh air.... Read more

It's a grand challenge: develop clean, sustainable technologies that deliver a low-carbon energy future, and through innovation, create jobs, new markets, and exports, and increase America's energy security.Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made it their mission to develop low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies such as advanced materials and... Read more

Scientists in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), in cooperation with colleagues throughout the Lab, have formed a team to evaluate the impacts of low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies that are still in the laboratory. Development of these technologies is part of a Lab-wide effort called Carbon Cycle 2.0, focused on sustainable energy... Read more

TreeHugger.com features the Heat Island Group's Cool Cars project, noting the benefits of solar reflective car coatings.See the full post here.... Read more

Current standards for U.S. offices require approximately 8 liters per second (L/s) of outdoor air ventilation per person. Providing twice as much ventilation would reduce sick building syndrome symptoms (SBS) and absences, improve work performance, and provide billions of dollars in annual economic benefits in the U.S., according to a recent study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... Read more

Nearly all cars sold in California have air conditioners. Cars painted with reflective coatings stay cooler in the sun and are easier to air condition to a comfortable temperature, according to a recent study by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division."Solar reflective paints can decrease the ‘soak' temperature of the air in a car that has been parked in the sun.... Read more

The Daily Californian documents ongoing work on the global cooling benefits of reflective roofs being conducted by Heat Island Group scientists Surabi Menon, Marc Fischer, and Francisco Salamanca. Read the full article here.... Read more

Teaming up to fight against escalating energy costs, the Department of Defense, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and Philips Corporation are demonstrating advanced energy-efficient lighting controls technologies in Fort Irwin, California."The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these technologies work in typical applications and buildings at Fort Irwin, and to provide... Read more

LBNL researchers Surabi Menon and Marc Fischer lead a DOE-sponsored project to explore the effects of pollution on cool roof benefits in India.See the full Berkeley Lab feature here.... Read more

Berkeley Lab features a Heat Island Group study on the potential benefits of cool-colored car shells.View the feature here.... Read more

An antifogging coating technology developed by researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory has won a 2011 R&D 100 award. The developers of Nanostructured Antifogging Coating are EETD's Sam Mao, Vasileia Zormpa and Xiaobo Chen.The coating provides a durable, nontoxic, antifogging and self-cleaning coating for architectural glass,... Read more

The developers of the fuel-efficient Berkeley-Darfur Stove for refugee camps in Central Africa are at it once again, this time evaluating inexpensive metal cookstoves for the displaced survivors of last year's deadly earthquake in Haiti. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have teamed up with students from the University of... Read more

Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, in smart phones, laptops, an array of other consumer electronics, and the newest electric cars. Good as they are, they could be much better, especially when it comes to lowering the cost and extending the range of electric cars. To do that, batteries need to store a lot more energy. The anode is a critical component for storing energy in lithium-ion batteries.... Read more

A new policy brief on the value of energy performance and green attributes in buildings, authored by Elizabeth Stuart, is available. Labels, certifications, and rating systems for energy efficiency performance and "green" attributes of buildings have been available in the U.S. for over 10 years, and used extensively in the European Union and Australia for longer. Such certifications and ratings... Read more

NASA's Ames Research Center and the Department of Energy (DOE), at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. are collaborating on technologies and processes for what may be the "greenest," highest-performing building in the federal government. Originally developed for aerospace applications, NASA intelligent system software will be installed in the new building, called... Read more

A technology with the potential to increase the lithium-ion storage capacity of advanced batteries by eight times has been awarded a $240,000 grant from the University of California's Discovery proof-of-concept grant program to accelerate its entrance into the marketplace. This project is led by Gao Liu (Principal Investigator) and Vince Battaglia (co-PI) in the Environmental Energy Technologies... Read more

The installed cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2010 and into the first half of 2011, according to the latest edition of an annual PV cost tracking report released by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The average installed cost of residential and commercial PV systems completed in 2010 fell by... Read more

Past work by Heat Island Group Postdoctoral Fellow George Ban-Weiss, describing how Central Park and other urban green spaces contribute to global cooling, has been featured on various platforms in recent weeks.Roger Pielke, Sr. wrote this post reviewing Ban-Weiss et al. (2011) on his Climate Science blog on 9/16/2011.The Daily Californian discussed the study in this article on 9/20/2011.Grist... Read more

Scientists in EETD provided technical analysis to the Department of Energy for the energy efficiency standards announced today.From the U.S. Department of Energy:Today, the Department of Energy issued final energy efficiency standards for home refrigerators and freezers that will improve their efficiency by about 25% by 2014. These new standards, developed through a consensus process with... Read more

A new policy brief for energy efficiency contractors and program managers describes how adding sales and business skills to contractor technical skills and certifications can increase the rate of customer conversions from home energy assessment to comprehensive home energy upgrade. It was prepared by Megan Billingsley and Elizabeth Stuart of the Electricity Markets and Policy Group of the... Read more

Please join the Better Buildings Program of the U.S. Department of Energy and experts from the Environmental Energy Technologies Department for a webinar in which we will discuss approaches to integrating experimental design into energy efficiency programs. Integrating Experimental Design Into Your Program Wednesday, August 24, 2011 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT Click here to Register for the Webinar... Read more

Leon (Lee) Schipper, a scientist who worked in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division for more than two decades, passed away on August 16 at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. He was 64 and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May. Schipper was an energy efficiency expert who first worked at the Lab as a graduate student in 1972 and then joined as a scientist in 1978. He went... Read more

Researchers, government agencies, and roofing manufacturers from around the world gathered in Berkeley last month (July 28-29, 2011) to discuss the latest research on cool roofs. These solar reflective materials reduce energy use, and help cool the planet by reflecting sunlight to outer space. Their use has begun to soar in markets around the world thanks to their economic and environmental... Read more