News

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

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 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

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

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

The Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine have just released a report on the health effects of indoor particulate matter, citing Berkeley Lab research. ETA researchers Bill Fisk and Brett Singer were invited presenters at the workshop and are also cited in this infographic.... Read more

In the mid-2000s, William Fisk, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stumbled upon two obscure Hungarian studies that challenged common assumptions about the air indoors. The studies suggested that, even at relatively low levels, carbon dioxide could impair how well people thought and worked.Fisk, an indoor–air quality expert who led the UC Berkeley Lab’s Indoor... Read more

A start-up team, including Dr. Hanna Breunig of the Sustainable Energy Systems group at LBNL, was recently accepted into the Bay Area regional NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), a program designed to help start-ups conduct customer discovery. Torq3, the start-up team, is developing new configurations of the Halbach Array Electric Motor (HAEM) to make them more powerful and energy efficient.... Read more

Automated vehicles can both drive more efficiently and be designed to be lighter, saving energy. However, the convenience of not having to pay attention on the road may lead people to use them more, increasing energy consumption. Which effect will tend to prevail? ETA’s Jeff Greenblatt seeks to answer that question in a blog posted on Move Forward.... Read more

The January/February issue of Mother Jones magazine quotes Jeff Greenblatt on autonomous vehicles. A Scientific American article also quoted Greenblatt on how driverless cars may slow pollution.... Read more

Berkeley Lab researchers are measuring truck emissions from above the Caldecott Tunnel. The effort, led by Berkeley lab Staff Scientist Thomas Kirchstetter, aims to track pollutants emitted not just from trucks generally, but from individual trucks. The study has already determined that California’s new emissions controls seem to be working, with “a factor of 10 decrease in the amount of... Read more

Berkeley Lab scientists have been awarded $1.3 million to study health impacts of thirdhand smoke.Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have been awarded $1.3 million for two sets of studies to better understand the health impacts of thirdhand smoke, the noxious residue that clings to virtually all indoor surfaces long after the secondhand smoke from a cigarette has... Read more

A new paper co-authored by ETA researcher Jeff Greenblatt looks at the potential energy and environmental impacts of combining two emerging trends: driverless cars and on-demand mobility. He notes several synergies that may result from using autonomous vehicles as shared cars, including lower greenhouse gas emissions.... Read more

New Berkeley Lab study finds lower greenhouse gas emissions on per-mile basis for driverless cars deployed as taxis.Imagine a fleet of driverless taxis roaming your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment’s notice. While this may seem fantastical, it may be only a matter of time before it becomes reality. And according to a new study from Lawrence Berkeley... Read more

Standards body approves Berkeley Lab’s method to mimic natural soiling of roofing materials.Cool roofs can help keep buildings cool, thus lowering the building’s energy use, while also mitigating the urban heat island effect by reflecting sunlight away from buildings and cities. But as cool roofs age and get soiled, how much of their reflectance do they lose?A collaboration led by scientists... Read more

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which result from the burning of fossil fuels, also reduces the incidence of health problems from particulate matter (PM) in these emissions.A team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), RAND Corp., and the University of Washington, has calculated that the... 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... 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... Read more

Assessing Probability and Uncertainty for Smarter Decisions and PoliciesIn 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... 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,... 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 feature article here, looks at how brine brought to the surface from saline aquifers during the process of carbon sequestration might be managed and used in other... 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... Read more