News

Six researchers in the Energy Technologies Area have been recognized in the annual Director's Awards, which applauds outstanding scientific contributions at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).Tom McKone received the Berkeley Lab Prize, a lifetime achievement award; Nihar Shah, a research scientist/engineer, received a societal impact award; and the... Read more

The National Alliance for Water Innovation, which is led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been awarded a five-year, $100-million Energy-Water Desalination Hub by DOE (pending appropriations) to address water security issues in the United States. The Hub will focus on early-stage research and development for energy-efficient and... Read more

A select audience recently gathered for the 2019 Art Rosenfeld Symposium on Energy Efficient and Grid Interactive Buildings. The day was dedicated to the ongoing scientific discoveries and research inspired by Rosenfeld, a Berkeley Lab Senior Scientist, UC Berkeley Professor and former Commissioner of the California Energy Commission.Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell greeted the audience with a... Read more

A grid communications model that began as a research project at Berkeley Lab has now become an international standard, paving the way toward smart grid improvements around the world.The standard, OpenADR, aids in demand response, the practice of managing energy demand from customers with signals based on price or reliability. OpenADR offers a common language energy customers and grid operators can... Read more

Four scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.AAAS awarded 416 of its members the distinction of Fellow this year for “their scientifically or socially distinguished... Read more

Recent wildfire smoke has greatly impacted air quality in the Bay Area. Experts from the Energy Technologies Area (ETA) weigh in on tips and resources for the public. Brett Singer and Woody Delp are internationally recognized experts in the field of indoor air quality. Singer is a Principal Investigator, Staff Scientist and Leader in the Indoor Air group; Delp is a Research Engineer in the Indoor... Read more

In a recent Facebook post, Energy Secretary Rick Perry lauds the DOE’s national labs and “the incredible work being undertaken by our nation’s brightest minds.” The post includes a video that features his visit to all 17 national labs, including Berkeley Lab.... Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

Berkeley Lab is a co-recipient of four awards — three awards that will fund research related to climate science, and one award for a cybersecurity project — from the University of California National Laboratory Fees Research Program. The Lab’s site leads for the four projects are listed below:Climate Impact of Manure Management from California Dairies Berkeley Lab site lead: Marc Fischer... Read more

Ashok Gadgil redesigned a simple technology, the wood-burning stove, to help Sudanese refugee women cook more efficiently, thus sparing them from the dangers of gathering firewood far from camp.In the developing world, sometimes the simplest technology can have the largest payoff.That's the lesson learned by Ashok Gadgil, a UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering and Berkeley... Read more

A renowned Lab researcher presented information about coal-based industrialization in developing countries, the intermittency of wind and solar power, stubborn uncertainties regarding severe climate change, and the admissibility of geoengineering at a recent workshop.Rob Socolow, professor emeritus and senior research staff in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton... Read more

Berkeley Lab Atmospheric Chemist Allen Goldstein and Theoretical Physicist Hitoshi Murayama received prestigious research grants from the Humboldt Foundation, which promotes collaborative research with German scientists. As part of the award, the two researchers will be invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating with colleagues at a research institution in Germany.Goldstein is a... Read more

Scientists from research areas across Berkeley Lab, including ETA's Hanna Breunig and Anna Spurlock, have been awarded new Early Career Development awards, as part of the Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program.... Read more

ETA's Lynn Price (left), senior scientist, retired from Berkeley Lab on June 29 and has stepped down as acting division director of the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts (EAEI) Division as well as department head of the International Energy Analysis Department in the Energy Technologies Area. Tom Kirchstetter, staff scientist, head of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems... Read more

Panagopoulos received a $35,000 scholarship from the Sweden-America Foundation to support his work at the Lab and in collaborations with Swedish scientists. The research focuses on human exposure to chemicals from artificial turf in sports arenas. The Foundation supports the exchange of science between Sweden, the U.S. and Canada.... Read more

Google Street View cars with pollution sensors are mapping pollution in Oakland, block by block, joining another assortment of low-cost sensors monitoring a wider array of gases and particles from the roofs of schools, museums, and hospitals in the Bay Area. The latter effort, led by ETA's Ronald Cohen, is called BEACO2N (BErkeley Atmospheric CO2 Observation Network).Read the full story at Wired... 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 state... 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