News

On the first Earth Day in 1970, researcher Steve Greenberg was one of 20 million Americans, then 10% of the population, inspired to take time to observe the fragility of the planet and the need to protect it. Over 50 years later, an estimated one billion people around the world—one in eight—are actively participating. In the early '70s, visionaries like Art Rosenfeld applied science and... Read more

Power plants and other industrial facilities often spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere like a leaky faucet. As governments around the world are striving to reduce and even eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions and reach “net zero” emissions by mid-century, they’re looking for technologies to help. What if we could somehow suck up all that carbon dioxide, like a giant vacuum cleaner? A... Read more

The third and final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report calls for aggressive and comprehensive actions if we are to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century. It finds we still need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically, beyond what governments have pledged, and that this emissions gap is exacerbated by implementation gaps... Read more

Improving a school's energy performance can affect more than utility bills — it can also boost indoor air quality and learning outcomes, making the classrooms healthier for students and staff. A new campaign, Efficient and Healthy Schools, will provide practical guidance on ventilation upgrades that can increase energy efficiency, lower costs, and improve the air at K-12 schools nationwide.... Read more

A recent episode of A Day in the Half Life, a podcast produced by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), focuses on energy storage: What is it, why do we need it, and what are the latest advances? Host Aliyah Kovner talks with Noël Bakhtian, director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage Center, and Mike Gerhardt, research scientist at SINTEF, a research organization based in Norway.... Read more

The Home Energy Score™ software suite, co-developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), was awarded the prestigious Federal Laboratory Consortium Impact Award (FLC) for excellence in technology transfer achievement. The FLC award is one of the field’s top honors for federal laboratories and their industry partners. Since 2012, the Home... Read more

Recordings are now available from an extensive three-day workshop that brought together faculty, students, industry partners, and technical professionals to improve the knowledge and practice of high-performance building operations. The annual Building Efficiency for Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center National Institute, co-hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), wrapped up... Read more

Poring over the line items on your monthly electricity bill may not sound like an enticing way to spend an afternoon, but the way electricity bills are structured has a significant impact on equitable energy access and distribution. For example, fixed fees can have a disproportionate impact on low-income households. And combined with other factors, low-income households and households of color are... Read more

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will join fellow industry leaders in a coalition to bring to market new technologies and products to address the converging crises of housing, economic inequity, supply chain volatility, and climate change in California and the U.S. In particular, the team will be working with the construction... Read more

Dramatic cost reductions over the last decade in battery storage and wind and solar energy position India to leapfrog to a more sustainable system for delivering affordable and reliable power to serve near a doubling in electricity demand by 2030, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). India, with a... Read more

A three-day national event will convene building efficiency experts to discuss building decarbonization and sustainability challenges and innovative solutions to pursue. The annual institute, “Building Technician Education in a Time of Challenges and Innovation,” takes place January 5 to 7, 2022, and is co-hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Building... Read more

Trains have been on the sidelines of electrification efforts for a long time in the U.S. because they account for only 2% of transportation sector emissions, but diesel freight trains emit 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and produce air pollution that leads to $6.5 billion in health costs, resulting in an estimated 1,000 premature deaths each year. What’s more, these deaths and... Read more

Could a tank of ice or hot water be a battery? Yes! If a battery is a device for storing energy, then storing hot or cold water to power a building’s heating or air-conditioning system is a different type of energy storage. Known as thermal energy storage, the technology has been around for a long time but has often been overlooked. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... Read more

Berkeley Lab has been awarded more than $13 million for five research projects that will accelerate the development of advanced lithium batteries and smart, connected vehicles, making it easier to switch to electric vehicles. The awards were announced by the Department of Energy and are part of a total of $209 million in battery research projects selected by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office.... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) is a free, award-winning online tool developed by Berkeley Lab with support from DOE’s Building Technologies Office (BTO) that increases the speed and scale of energy retrofit identification in commercial buildings. The virtual tool enabled one California state agency to avoid audit costs of $3.3... Read more

Berkeley Lab received the prestigious Benner Award at the Building Commissioning Association (BCxA) 2021 Annual Conference October 7, 2021. ​Berkeley Lab was recognized for its outstanding leadership in the area of commercial building commissioning, which is a systematic and intensive quality assurance process that ensures greater energy efficiency, enhanced safety, and lower building operation,... Read more

Exponential energy storage deployment is both expected and needed in the coming decades. To that end, the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is hosting a summit on March 8 and 9, 2022, to discuss harnessing science, technology, and policy to accelerate energy storage solutions for our nation. The virtual public summit will convene and connect national... Read more

States are increasingly recognizing equity as a goal of utility regulation, going beyond traditionally stated objectives to ensure that electricity systems are reliable, safe, and fairly priced. But they are just beginning to grapple with how to achieve this goal. A new report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Advancing Equity in Utility Regulation, provides four... Read more

Earlier this summer, Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm launched the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy Earthshots Initiative, and the first Energy Earthshot is the “Hydrogen Shot,” with the goal of accelerating development and deployment of clean hydrogen across sectors. DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) plays a leading role in the research and... Read more

Having good room ventilation to dilute and disperse indoor air pollutants has long been recognized, and with the COVID-19 pandemic its importance has become all the more heightened. But new experiments by indoor air researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) show that certain circumstances will result in poor mixing of room air, meaning airborne contaminants may not be... Read more

Science innovators are invited to apply for the two-year fellowship program hosted at Cyclotron Road, an opportunity to advance hard technologies that have the potential for broad societal impact from concept to viable first product. Cyclotron Road is a division of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The fellowship program is run in partnership with... Read more

All seventeen U.S. national laboratories and many prominent publishers, journals, and other organizations in scientific publishing announced today the beginning of a partnership to support name change requests from researchers on past published papers. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is coordinating the effort. This agreement will allow researchers who wish to change their... Read more

Since buildings consume 75% of electricity in the U.S., they offer great potential for saving energy and reducing the demands on our rapidly changing electric grid. But how much, where, and through which strategies could better management of building energy use actually impact the electricity system? A comprehensive new study led by researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley... Read more

Windows make up 7% of the envelope area of a home but can account for 47% of the envelope heat loss. High-performance windows thus represent a significant opportunity for consumers to be more comfortable and save money – and help reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions while doing so. Now Berkeley Lab is teaming up with the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the Pacific... Read more

In our future electrified world, the demand for battery storage is projected to be enormous, reaching to upwards of 2 to 10 terawatt-hours (TWh) of annual battery production by 2030, from less than 0.5 TWh today. However, concerns are growing as to whether key raw materials will be adequate to meet this future demand. The lithium-ion battery – the dominant technology for the foreseeable future... Read more