News

A benchmarking tool to help dairy owners and operators use energy and water as efficiently as possible in their facilities was released today by scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.The BEST-Dairy allows a user to calculate energy and water use intensity and obtain a benchmarking score for the selected plant, as compared with the... Read more

Two Berkeley Lab Scientists Were AuthorsA recent report examining the potential role of renewable power in reducing emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases concludes that a high percentage of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid- century if backed by the right enabling public policies.Two researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence... Read more

As China's economy continues to soar, its energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will keep on soaring as well—or so goes the conventional wisdom. A new analysis by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now is challenging that notion, one widely held in both the United States and China.... Read more

New research by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds strong evidence that homes with solar photovoltaic (PV) systems sell for a premium over homes without solar systems.... Read more

EETD Post-Doctoral Fellow George Ban-Weiss participated in an atmospheric modeling study of black carbon aerosols and their impact on climate change while he was with the Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University. Read Carnegie's press release, "Climate change from black carbon depends on altitude," here:"Palo Alto, CA — Scientists have known for decades that black carbon aerosols... Read more

Thomas McKone, Leader of the Environmental Chemistry, Exposure, and Risk Group of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, has been quoted extensively in the news media on the transport and health risks of radiation from Japan.McKone will be a speaker at the Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association webinar on April 6 at 12:00 Pacific Time titled "Public and Worker Health... Read more

Launched in 2006, over 8,700 residential energy upgrades have been completed through Austin Energy's Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program. The program's lending partner, Velocity Credit Union (VCU) has originated almost 1,800 loans, totaling approximately $12.5 million. Residential energy efficiency loans are typically small, and expensive to originate and service relative to larger... Read more

Michael Sohn, Staff Scientist and Leader of the Airflow and Pollutant Transport Group, EETD, is serving on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Panel, Office of Pesticide Programs. The purpose of the panel is to review a probabilistic approach to source-to-outcome health risk assessments.... Read more

The Healthy Zero Energy Buildings (HZEB) website has made its debut.The HZEB research program's goal is to develop the information needed for scientifically-sound commercial building ventilation standards that balance energy efficiency objectives with the need to maintain acceptable indoor air quality.Zero (net) energy buildings have a net energy consumption of zero over a typical year. The... Read more

The two largest greenhouse gas-emitting nations, the United States and China, have formed a partnership to research and develop clean energy technology. Agreements formalizing the research plans of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), announced jointly by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao more than a year ago, were signed in January 2011 during a state visit to... Read more

Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Carla Peterman to the California Energy Commission.Peterman is a doctoral candidate in the Energy and Resources Group, University of California Berkeley and a graduate student researcher with the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her primary research interests are renewable energy, technology innovation, and... Read more

From the FERC news release:"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today issued for public comment a study that seeks to ensure reliability for consumers by identifying tools that will help manage the planning and operations of new generation resources into the nation's electricity system.The study, conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with a team of power system... Read more

Buildings are responsible for a large fraction of total U.S. energy demand and buildings are replaced slowly. About one third of the U.S. population lives in multifamily buildings. The residents of multifamily buildings often have below-average incomes and they are sometimes exposed to high levels of potentially harmful indoor contaminants. The U.S. is embarking on a program of aggressive energy... Read more

Environmental Energy Technologies Division researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have released a new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S., showing that the average cost of these systems remained largely unchanged from 2008 to 2009, before beginning a steep decline in 2010.The number of solar PV... Read more

Charles Goldman, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, has been given a special award by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy in recognition of the "Electricity Markets and Policy Group's critical achievements and leadership in the energy efficiency field." Goldman is the leader of this research group.The award was presented at a reception during the... Read more

Eric Masanet, deputy leader of the International Energy Studies (IES) Group, was a guest editor of a special issue of Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology exploring new applications of information and communication technology (ICT) that could save society significant amounts of energy and money, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.IES is part of the Environmental Energy... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been chosen to lead a consortium for a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center on Building Energy Efficiency. The Center will develop technologies for low-energy residential and commercial buildings, as well as work on commercialization of those technologies and research how human behavior affects building energy use.The... Read more

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released a new study Thursday documenting the design of and early experience with state-level renewables portfolio standard (RPS) programs in the United States that have been specifically designed to encourage solar energy. The study finds that these state-level RPS programs have already proven to... Read more

Hundreds of millions of dollars in public money are flowing into programs to support improvements in home energy efficiency. Ensuring that these funds have their maximum impact by motivating homeowners to seek out home energy improvements is the subject of a new report from researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)."Convincing millions of Americans to divert their... Read more

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

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

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

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

India signs on to DOE's Super-efficient Equipment and Appliances (SEAD) initiative.... Read more

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