News

A new research team bringing together a multidisciplinary group of experts to explore ways to make our cities more efficient has been created at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).The Urban Systems group will focus on buildings and their interactions with the urban environment. The group is part of the Building Technology & Urban Systems division in Berkeley Lab’s Energy... Read more

Computer gaming accounts for about 5 percent of all residential energy use in California -- equal to the same amount as 10 million new refrigerators – yet gamers do not routinely think about energy efficiency or ways to trim energy costs while gaming.In a recent study sponsored by the California Energy Commission, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) have revealed... Read more

Students and early career researchers in the areas of building science, energy-efficiency and the electricity grid are invited to enter a prestigious poster competition sponsored by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Five winners will be invited to give a five-minute lightning talk at Rosenfeld Symposium 2019 - Energy-Efficient and Grid-Interactive Buildings, to be held at the David Brower... Read more

A recent segment on CNBC about how a growing battery industry is changing the world featured Vince Battaglia, leader of the Energy Storage Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), along with the lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) user facility.The eight-minute piece features Battaglia and other scientists talking about the history and future of batteries. The introduction of... Read more

An online data management tool for water/energy retrofits, and a device that recycles carbon dioxide into renewable fuels have both been recognized in the 2018 R&D 100 Awards given to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).eProject Builder won the 2018 R&D 100 Award, and Opus 12 is a co-recipient of a Special Recognition Award. The... 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

ETA staff members were recently honored for outstanding efforts to improve diversity, implement innovative lighting in a "Living Lab" and performing breakthrough discoveries in thirdhand smoke research.The 2018 Director's Awards for Exceptional Achievement recognize accomplishments, leadership, collaboration, multi-disciplinary science, cross-divisional projects and commitment to excellence in... Read more

October 8 marks the 4th annual National Hydrogen Day—a date that gives a nod to the atomic weight of hydrogen (1.008) and to the increasing role hydrogen fuel is playing nationally. Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists are working every day on research that allows hydrogen to be produced, stored, and used in cleaner and even more efficient and affordable ways.Hydrogen fuel is... Read more

Today, electric vehicles (EVs) make up just a small part of the U.S. road fleet, but they are gaining ground in some regions. While EVs hold promise for lowering costs and air pollutant emissions from auto travel, among other benefits, their growth raises questions about the changes needed to support this transition. How much charging infrastructure will be needed, and what role should utilities... Read more

As part of Berkeley Lab's mission to bring science to the world, the Energy Technologies Area is hosting three visiting scientists through the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs TechWomen program.The goal is to empower, connect and support the next generation of women leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by providing them access and... Read more

Rick Perry has awarded a Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award to the scientific and operational leadership team for the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).The center seeks to develop high-performance, low-cost energy storage technologies for transportation and the electric grid. The award-winning team includes Berkeley Lab researchers Nitash Balsara, Gerbrand Ceder, and Kristin... Read more

Adam Weber, who leads the Energy Conversion Group within Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Energy Technologies Area, was recently named to the Electrochemical Society's 2018 Class of Fellows. The fellows are chosen for their scientific achievements, leadership and service to the society.Weber's current research involves understanding and optimizing fuel-cell and electrolyzer performance and... 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

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

Scientists can computationally predict all sorts of novel materials but, until now, had no way of knowing if it could actually be synthesized. Berkeley Lab researchers Muratahan Aykol, Shyam Dwaraknath, Wenhao Sun, and Kristin Persson have now found a chemically sensitive, rigorous thermodynamic limit to determine when a material can’t be made, a discovery which could greatly accelerate... Read more

Li-ion battery development relies on the chemical reaction of the active elements in the electrode’s materials. A promising new strategy uses an unconventional element typically believed to be inactive. In a recent paper, ETA’s Wei Tong and Bryan McCloskey, and Wanli Yang of the ALS, reveal experimental evidence to confirm the contribution of this unconventional element. Read the full article... 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

On World Water Day, watch researcher Emily Tow of the Energy Technologies Area talk about her project to treat municipal wastewater in an energy-efficient way and bring it up to drinking water standards. Using the Molecular Foundry, she is looking at biofouling of membranes used to treat wastewater.... Read more

Our second video for World Water Day this week features Chinmayee Subban, a researcher in the Energy Technologies Area. She discusses her technology for removing salt from low salinity water, a tech solution that could provide an alternative irrigation source for California’s agriculture needs.... Read more

Adam Weber, leader of the Energy Conversion Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was quoted in a Vox story about efforts at commercial-scale hydrogen production.There's currently “a resurgence of hydrogen-based activity around the world,” Weber says in the Feb. 16 story, "This company may have solved one of the hardest problems in clean energy." Weber refers to the pursuit of... Read more

Kristin Persson of the Energy Technologies Area was a recent guest on the NPR radio program "Marketplace," where she discussed developments in battery technology. Lithium-ion batteries currently in use are "highly optimized" and not likely to improve, she says. "If you're going to do a better battery, you have to discover a completely new material." Read or listen to the full interivew at:... Read more

The China Energy Group took home a prestigious R&D 100 Award for its innovative Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for Low-Carbon Cities (BEST Cities), which provides software for low-carbon planning that users can easily install and run. Berkeley Lab also won awards for technologies that help determine how solar energy affects the grid; understand the functions of genes in microbes under... Read more

Like a well-tended greenhouse garden, a specialized type of hydrogen fuel cell – which shows promise as a clean, renewable next-generation power source for vehicles and other uses – requires precise temperature and moisture controls to be at its best. If the internal conditions are too dry or too wet, the fuel cell won’t function well.But seeing inside a working fuel cell at the tiny scales... Read more

Animation – This animated 3-D rendering, generated by an X-ray-based imaging technique at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, shows tiny pockets of water (blue) in a fibrous sample. The X-ray experiments showed how moisture and temperature can affect the performance of fuel-cell components. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)Like a well-tended greenhouse garden, a specialized type of hydrogen fuel cell –... Read more