News

Two projects on residential buildings will help state meet targets for low-energy buildings.California has established ambitious goals to reduce energy consumption in buildings, including a policy goal for all new residential buildings to be zero net energy (ZNE) by 2020. Now the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has launched two projects to help the state... Read more

Two projects on residential buildings will help state meet targets for low-energy buildings.California has established ambitious goals to reduce energy consumption in buildings, including a policy goal for all new residential buildings to be zero net energy (ZNE) by 2020. Now the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has launched two projects to help the... Read more

Alex Bayen, the director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies and a researcher in the Lab’s Energy Technologies Area, was recently featured in a news segment titled “Driving apps like Waze are creating new traffic problems” for Crosscurrents, an award-winning daily news magazine from KALW Public Radio.Read More... Read more

The Rocky Mountain Institute released an “Insight Brief” on how to scale home energy financing projects that cites a Berkeley Lab report, “Current Practices in Efficiency Financing: An Overview for State and Local Governments,” by ETA’s Greg Leventis and others. The Rocky Mountain Institute is an independent, non-partisan nonprofit that drives the efficient and restorative use of... Read more

To meet skyrocketing demand for electricity, African countries may have to triple their energy output by 2030. While hydropower and fossil fuel power plants are favored approaches in some quarters, a new assessment by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that wind and solar can be economically and environmentally competitive options and can... Read more

It's late February, which means farmers in Central and Southern California are busy harvesting thousands of acres of citrus and winter vegetables crops. Or at least they're trying to. Monster storms have delayed harvests and damaged crops, resulting in losses of California crops that typically bring in 4 billion dollars annually. Recent policies on food waste reduction tend to focus on the waste... Read more

In 2015, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley announced a partnership with Tsinghua University in Beijing. They formed the Berkeley Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change, a center helping to develop scientifically based clean energy solutions and the next generation of leaders to champion those solutions.Today, that effort received welcome... Read more

Emissions of methane—a potent climate-warming gas⎯may be roughly twice as high as officially estimated for the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of the emissions come from biological sources, such as landfills, but natural gas leakage is also an important source, according to a new study from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).The report by EAEI... Read more

India has announced a target of increasing the total renewable energy (RE) installed capacity from about 34GW in 2015 to 175GW by 2022 (including 100GW solar and 60GW wind capacity). This study assesses the technical feasibility of integrating 175 GW of renewables capacity in the Indian electricity grid, ascertains its impact on power sector investments and operations, and quantifies the... Read more

Many residential and commercial buildings leak air like sieves, wasting up to 40% of their heating and cooling energy. The primary reason for this energy loss is gaps and holes that exist in buildings’ air ducts. Getting an airtight seal on every connection can be difficult; even with skillful installation and generous applications of mastic (the putty used to seal joints), leakage still occurs.... Read more

The episode featuring Jeffery Greenblatt airs on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 10 p.m. (Pacific Time). Host Ty Burrell takes to the road to see the environmental revolutions being made in electric(EV) and self-driving vehicles. Greenblatt joins other experts to talk about advancements in EVs, EV incentives and driverless technology.... Read more

EAEI's Ryan Wiser is featured on the Energy Transition Show podcast to discuss a recent Berkeley Lab/NREL report on the cost of wind power. Can wind prices keep falling, or have they bottomed out? The report, based on a survey of 163 of the world's foremost wind energy experts, examines what factors have led to a reduction in the cost of wind power. Click here to listen to the podcast.Click here... Read more

ETA Researchers Michael McNeil, Wei Feng, Stephane de la Rue du Can, Nina Zheng Khanna, Jing Ke, and Nan Zhou were recently published in Energy Policy Journal. The article, Energy Efficiency Outlook in China's Urban Buildings Sector Through 2030, discusses "a bottom-up modeling approach to quantify emission reduction from efficiency programs," and its results.Abstract:This study uses bottom-up... Read more

EAEI researchers Hugo Destaillats and Tom Kirchstetter are part of a team that won a 2016 R&D100 Award for their work on the Cool Roof Time Machine project.This research establishes a method to simulate soiling and weathering of roofing material, reproducing in the lab in only a few days what would naturally take three years. This “cool roof time machine” protocol has been approved by ASTM... Read more

Research by EAEI’s Ranjit Deshmukh and Grace Wu on planning renewable energy zones in Africa was recently highlighted in Nature.Across Africa, several nations are moving aggressively to develop their solar and wind capacity. The momentum has some experts wondering whether large parts of the continent can vault into a clean future.See the full story here.... Read more

In the Nature article, "Can Wind and Solar Fuel Africa's Future?" IES' Grace Wu and Ranjit Deshmukh are quoted and their research highlighted on planning renewable-energy zones in Africa. "'The study is the most comprehensive mapping effort so far for most of those countries', says Wu."The article states, "Across Africa, several nations are moving aggressively to develop their solar and wind... Read more

Prices for wind energy have hit rock bottom, thanks to technological advances and learning. Are the opportunities for significant additional cost reductions tapped out, or are much-lower costs still possible? Recent research by Berkeley Lab suggests that some energy planners, analysts, and policymakers may be underestimating both the potential for and uncertainty in wind energy cost reductions.... Read more

EAEI researchers Jeff Greenblatt and Max Wei are quoted in an October 6, 2016 article in Christan Science Monitor on methane emissions from fossil fuels.... Read more

Two factors that contributed to the poisoning of tens of thousands of Washington, D.C., residents through their drinking water in the early 2000s—lead pipes and a disinfectant called chloramine—continue to coexist in countless water systems nationwide, including in the Bay Area. But not to worry, says UC Berkeley water expert and engineering professor David Sedlak; they’re safe when properly... Read more

Few would argue that the state hasn't done its fair share in the fight against climate change. But the question of how much the Global Warming Solutions Act has actually cut California's greenhouse gas emissions is tougher to get at. "I think that it worked," says the Lab's Jeffrey Greenblatt.... Read more

When an individual utility customer decides to add rooftop solar to their home or business, the utility needs to deliver less power to that customer from other sources. A small number of solar adopters may not have much of an impact, but rapid growth in rooftop solar in some parts of the country has the potential to significantly impact the need for generating resources and transmission and... Read more

Technology advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy, according to a survey of the world's foremost wind power experts led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Experts anticipate cost reductions of 24%-30% by 2030 and 35%-41% by 2050, under a median or 'best guess' scenario, driven by bigger and more efficient turbines, lower capital and... Read more

Two new Berkeley Lab studies find record low prices across all sectorsSolar energy system pricing is at an all-time low, according to the latest editions of two recurring “state of the market” reports released today by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).Within the market for distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, installed prices in 2015... Read more

Wind energy pricing remains attractive to utility and commercial purchasers, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prices offered by newly built wind projects are averaging around 2¢/kWh, driven lower by technology advancements and cost reductions."Wind energy... Read more

Berkeley Lab study identifies two additional carcinogens not previously reported in e-cigarette vapor.While previous studies have found that electronic cigarettes emit toxic compounds, a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has pinpointed the source of these emissions and shown how factors such as the temperature, type, and age of the device play a role in emission... Read more