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Can financing deliver significant private capital and rapid growth in home energy efficiency improvements? A key element may be attracting secondary-market investors to buy the efficiency loans and thereby replenish funds for a new round of lending. A new policy brief from Lawrence Berkeley National... Read More
Berkeley Lab's Electrcity Markets and Policy Group has released a new, comprehensive report on on-bill efficiency financing programs—which offer loans for energy improvements that can be paid back on the borrower's utility bill. The report, produced through the State and Local Energy Efficiency Action (SEE Action) Network, surveys the landscape of on-bill financing programs and carefully examines program design elements and key performance... Read More
Berkeley Lab's Electricity and Markets Policy Group has released a new report, authored jointly by Berkeley Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, titled, “A Survey of State-Level Cost and Benefit Estimates of Renewable Portfolio Standards.”
Renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policies are in place in more than half of all U.S. states and have played a critical role in driving renewable energy deployment over the past decade. In many... Read More
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group III, addressing the mitigation of climate change, has issued an executive summary of its Fifth Assessment report. The report updates policymakers on the technical and socio-economic aspects of climate change, including technologies and policies that can reduce impacts.
According to its website, "The IPCC Working Group III assesses all relevant options for mitigating climate change... Read More
As more states and utilities increasingly turn to energy efficiency programs to manage demand for electricity and natural gas, it is important to understand how much saving energy costs. By examining regulatory reports on efficiency programs in 31 states, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have determined the cost of saving energy through efficiency programs funded by utility customers in the period 2009-2011. A... Read More
EETD's Hanna Breunig has been named one of 16 Schmidt-MacArthur Fellows in the program's class of 2014.
Breunig is a graduate student researcher in the Sustainable Energy Systems Group's emerging technology analysis group, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is one of 16 Schmidt-MacArthur fellows in the class of... Read More
The China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released the MAnufacturing STructure and Energy Research (MASTER) tool. The MASTER tool is designed to help users understand how different factors (production growth of industry subsectors, industry structural change, and energy intensity change of industry subsectors) influence overall industrial energy use trends over time. Policy makers often seek such values in order to make... Read More
Smarter power plugs and appliances that can turn electronics on and off according to a homeowner's behavior rather than a fixed schedule. A water heater that delivers water to the different fixtures in the house at temperatures customized for the particular water use. A smarter-than-ever thermostat that knows how to set different temperatures for different rooms in a house. High-pressure water jets that can cut magnetic metal to construct high-... Read More
Massachusetts focused-study finds other factors, such as proximity to highways, beaches have price impact
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) along with University of Connecticut analyzed more than 122,000 home sales near 26 wind facilities (with over 1,500 within a mile of operating turbines) in densely populated Massachusetts, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.
"This is the third of three... Read More
Tools and models to find the best way to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in cities and industries, to follow the transport of pollutants through the environment, and to calculate the cost of power interruptions are among those available on a new Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) web site.
The... Read More
Quantifying the Economic Implications of Indoor Air on Energy Efficiency, Performance, and Health
William Fisk is a senior scientist, mechanical engineer, and leader of the Indoor Environment Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). During his 33 years at the lab, he has researched the interrelated issues of building energy performance, ventilation, indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and occupant health and performance. His... Read More
Researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have released a new report titled “Exploring California PV Home Premiums.”
Although photovoltaic (PV) penetration in the United States is increasing rapidly, properly valuing homes with PV systems remains a barrier to PV deployment. Previous studies show that PV homes command sales price premiums. Still, some appraisers and other home valuers... Read More
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and their colleagues studied the chemical mechanisms that allow photocatalysis to remove pollution from indoor air and urban atmospheres, as well as allow self-cleaning surfaces to work. The basis of the process is a catalyst such as titanium dioxide (TiO2) energized by light. Building materials and coatings with nano-sized TiO2 particles are gaining... Read More
Assessing Probability and Uncertainty for Smarter Decisions and Policies
In this first of a series of Q&As with researchers in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Michael Sohn talks about probability and uncertainty in modeling.
Michael Sohn is an environmental engineer working to understand how chemicals and energy are used in the world at various scales—global, state, and building. His research interests are in mathematical... Read More
For decades, California has used groundbreaking tools to collect and analyze emissions data from a variety of sources to establish a scientific basis for policy making. As its scope has expanded to include greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, it has sought out similar tools to use to achieve the goals of legislation such as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).
To support this effort, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a... Read More
The 40th anniversary of the founding of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Berkeley Lab is November 1, 2013.
Every Thursday during October, we'll look back at a significant energy-efficient technology developed by EETD and its research partners.
This Week
EETD has developed energy-efficient technologies that save energy in your home and workplace. One of these is aerosol duct sealing. Leaky ducts in homes and offices can waste 20... Read More
The price at which electricity from large-scale solar power projects in the western United States is being sold has fallen by more than two-thirds in the last five years, according to a new report released today by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report—"Utility-Scale Solar 2012: An Empirical Analysis of Project Cost, Performance, and Pricing Trends in the United States"—focuses exclusively on ground-mounted solar projects with... Read More
Industry could more than double in size from ~$6 billion in 2013 to $11-$15 billion by 2020
Aggregate revenue growth rates for U.S. energy service companies (ESCOs) significantly outpaced U.S. GDP growth during the three-year period 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
ESCOs primarily use performance-based contracts to provide energy efficiency, renewable... Read More
On Berkeley Lab's News Center website, there's a new story about the China Energy Group's China Energy Databook.
"In the five years since the China Energy Group of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released its last edition of the China Energy Databook, China has achieved two dubious distinctions: it surpassed the United States in energy consumption and it surpassed the United... Read More
As part of an effort to analyze the cost per unit of savings for utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has reviewed regulatory filings nationwide to produce a program typology and standardized data metrics for assessing energy efficiency program characteristics, costs and impacts. These types, definitions, and naming conventions facilitate meta-analysis of efficiency program results and... Read More
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.
"This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic [the first was published in 2009 - see below], and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind... 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 ... Read More
The Department of Energy has released the winning student team from the Max Tech Appliance Design Contest. The Max Tech competition, held in May of this year, was coordinated by a team in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Here is DOE's announcement:
As part of the Obama Administration's commitment to supporting the next generation of scientists and engineers, the Energy... Read More
A new report released by the State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network (SEE Action) prepared by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provides guidance and recommendations on methodologies that can be used for rigorously estimating energy savings from residential behavior-based efficiency programs. The report was designed for regulators, evaluation professionals, program administrators, and other energy efficiency program... Read More
Ed Vine, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division is the editor of a special issue of the journal Energy Efficiency focusing solely on the evaluation of energy efficiency (2012: Volume 5 Number 1). The papers published in the issue are a subset of those delivered at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference held in Europe in 2010.
The issue's introduction, by Vine and S. Thomas of the Wuppertal... Read More
A study released today by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identifies steps that energy efficiency program managers can take to deliver significant savings on home energy bills to middle-income households.
"Middle-income households have been hit hard by the recent recession, and sagging home prices have undermined the traditional reliance of middle-income households on home equity for financing home... Read More
Using measuring techniques that combine video with devices measuring particulate matter, black carbon and nitrogen oxides in real time, scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) of Berkeley Lab have verified that policies designed to reduce the emissions of particulates from trucks driving onto the Port of Oakland have been effective.
The paper describing their results, by Timothy Dallman and Robert Harley of the UC... Read More
Researchers estimate that those of us in developed countries spend 90 percent of our time indoors, which means that most of the time we are breathing air polluted by emissions from indoor sources. Providing more outdoor air ventilation can improve indoor air quality; however, energy is needed to heat, cool, humidify or dehumidify, and sometimes filter the ventilation air brought indoors from outdoors. Studies have shown that about 10 percent of... Read More
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is seeking participants for a study of air quality in California homes. The study is being conducted by scientists in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab. This project is funded by the California Energy Commission and is focused on homes with natural gas appliances. Individuals who are selected to participate and complete the requirements of the study will receive $75 and free... 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 information technology for buildings; next-generation... Read More
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