News

Three Berkeley Lab researchers, including Corinne Scown of the Energy Technologies Area, recently received the Secretary of Energy's Achievement Award as part of a larger team from the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Here's more from JBEI's announcement:The award is designed to recognize the contributions of Department of Energy (DOE) employees to the mission of the Department and to the benefit... Read more

A national online energy data management system is transforming how energy retrofit projects implemented by a wide variety of users – including local, state, and federal governments – develop projects and track performance.The eProject Builder energy project data management and benchmarking tool was developed by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to... Read more

Two projects from Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area have been named as finalists for R&D Magazine's R&D 100 Awards, which recognize pioneering ideas in science and technology.OP1 from Opus 12, the carbon dioxide recycling startup included in Cyclotron Road's first cohort, and eProject Builder, a system that standardizes data collection for Energy Savings Performance Contract... Read more

Affordable indoor air quality monitors for the home can be worth the purchase, a recent product evaluation revealed, but all of the monitors tested by researchers were found to have either underreported or missed the presence of very small particles that can penetrate deeply into the lungs.Indoor air researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)... Read more

A newly updated online tool and guidebook from Berkeley Lab and industry partner Nexant Inc. will help utilities measure the cost and impact of power outages — a key strategic consideration as the nation works to modernize the electricity system, and especially important now during hot summer months that can strain the power grid.Read more at the Berkeley Lab News Center web site:... Read more

Ever wonder why it’s difficult to concentrate when office temperatures rise?A July 16, 2018 segment of NPR’s "Morning edition — Heat Making You Lethargic? Research Shows It Can Slow Your Brain, Too" - cites a 2006 Berkeley Lab study, "Effect of temperature on task performance in office environment" co-authored by William Fisk of the Sustainable Energy & Environmental Systems Department,... Read more

After serving four years as Berkeley Lab's Associate Director for Energy Technologies, Ramamoorthy Ramesh will be returning to his research in ultra low-power electronics while also helping to lead a major Berkeley Lab research initiative in next-generation, energy-efficient microelectronics.This new initiative has been dubbed "Beyond Moore's Law," as it seeks the solution to what will happen when... Read more

Ravi Prasher has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Technologies at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The announcement follows an international search.Prasher, an internationally renowned scientist in the field of thermal energy science and technologies, has been director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage and Distributed Resources... Read more

The United States and China have been cooperating since 2016 under the Power Consumption, Demand and Competition Cooperation to identify solutions to advance key elements of China’s comprehensive market reforms to foster a competitive, transparent and sustainable electric power sector in China. Co-led by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources and China’s National... Read more

Energy savings programs offered by utilities—from residential lighting and appliance rebates to programs for small businesses—help ensure reliability on the grid at the most affordable cost, according to a comprehensive study just released by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."At an average cost of just 2.5 cents to save a kilowatt-hour, energy... Read more

A team led by ETA’s Robert Kostecki is one of 14 awardees whose research is focused on reducing the cost of solar-thermal desalination and helping the technology reach new markets, including areas that are not connected to the electric grid. Read the full announcement on the DOE energy.gov website.... Read more

Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab's Electricity Markets and Policy Group was named one of Wind Power Monthly's influential people of 2017.Wiser is the lead author of Berkeley Lab's annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which can be found at https://emp.lbl.gov/wind-technologies-market-report/Read the full article at www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1448419/influential-interesting-2017... Read more

A study involving Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been named among the best of 2017 in a new ranking from Environmental Science & Technology, one of the leading journals in its field. "High-Resolution Air Pollution Mapping with Google Street View Cars: Exploiting Big Data," was the top environmental technology paper in ES&T's roundup, which also named top papers in three other... Read more

Indoor air quality in schools often fails to meet minimum standards, and student performance is clearly diminished when ventilation rates are low, according to a recent analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.Elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide have been documented in schools across the U.S., Europe and Asia, the study finds. "These CO2 data indicate a widespread failure to provide the... Read more

Berkeley Lab has designed, calibrated and has been operating a world-class testing laboratory for efficiency and emissions from biomass cookstoves for many years. However, no guidebooks or textbooks are available that advise other researchers on how to build their own similar testing laboratory. Due to a significant number of requests from cookstove researchers around the world (including but not... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was recently honored with a prestigious Green Leadership Award at the 12th Annual Green California Summit in Sacramento.The Lab's Energy Technologies Area (ETA) was highlighted for innovative breakthroughs in the energy efficiency category for research aimed at helping California meet its zero net energy (ZNE) building goals, while ensuring adequate indoor air... Read more

Hanna Breunig has always forged her own path in science. “If something feels right, I don’t hesitate to pursue an idea that could make the world a better place,” says Breunig, a senior scientific engineering associate in the Energy Technologies Area.Now with funding from an Early Career Laboratory Directed Research and Development award announced last November, she’s looking for affordable... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with public and private partners, has released the most comprehensive publicly available database yet of U.S. wind turbine locations and characteristics. The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) will allow unparalleled ability for government agencies and others to make planning decisions. The USWTDB, funded by the U.S.... Read more

Lab researchers Marc Fischer, Seongeun Jeong, and Xinguang Cui contributed to a study led by Imperial College London that reported a new technique to estimate CO2 emissions from fossil fuels using atmospheric measurements, tested over three months in California. This is the first time fossil fuel emissions have been independently checked for such a large area. Read the full article at the Berkeley... Read more

Whether it’s e-cigarettes or emerging heated tobacco products, the market for electronic nicotine delivery systems is booming. Most scientists agree that vaping is less harmful than smoking tobacco, but how much is known about the “clouds” they create? ETA’s Hugo Destaillats discusses the chemical composition of these complex aerosols in a recent article in the Analytical Scientist.... Read more

It may be only a matter of time before urban dwellers can hail a self-driving taxi, so researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley decided to analyze the cost, energy, and environmental implications of a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles operating in Manhattan.Using models they built and data from more than 10 million taxi... Read more

Stakeholders in government, business, and academia recently met to identify solutions to Mexico’s growing space cooling (air conditioning) energy demand. The “Summit on Space Cooling Research Needs and Opportunities in Mexico” was convened by the Berkeley Lab Mexico Energy Initiative and United States Agency for International Development, in partnership with Mexico. More information is... Read more

Berkeley Lab's International Energy Studies group recently hosted a delegation from the Indonesian Government to discuss energy efficiency and clean energy issues. The delegation was led by Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs (CMMA) Deputy Minister for Infrastructure Ridwan Djamaluddin. Berkeley Lab researchers identified 10 GW of peak load savings from energy efficiency, and presented the... Read more

Read about one researcher's take on the experience of forming research partnerships between academia, national laboratories and private industry that serve the public good.Corinne Scown is Deputy for Research in the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.... Read more

Research by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) suggests that traffic apps might work for an individual, but could make congestion worse overall. “This problem has been vastly overlooked,” said Alexandre Bayen of the Lab’s Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division in The Atlantic. “It is just the beginning of something that is going be much worse.” Read... Read more