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Engineering leads campus in energy savings

12/23/13 Energy Incentive Program — The College of Engineering topped all other campus operating units in saving electricity in 2013, cutting consumption by more than 1.3 million kilowatt hours and earning a $134,358 incentive rebate. College leaders credited more-efficient light fixtures and sensors and timers that turn off lights and fans when not needed.
Chart of potential power sources for the western United States

Envisioning low-cost solar

11/01/13 — Berkeley scientists have found that low-cost solar power could supply more than a third of all energy needs in the western U.S. by 2050.
Artificial forest

Artificial forest

11/01/13 — Berkeley researchers have developed an “artificial forest,” a model that directly converts sunlight into chemical fuels in a process that mimics photosynthesis.

Promising cost analysis for thermoelectricity

07/01/13 Royal Society of Chemistry — Scientists, including Berkeley mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Shannon Yee, have derived a metric to analyze the cost of power generation using thermoelectric technology. The metric shows that thermoelectric devices have greater potential in large-scale power generation than previously thought.

Manufacturing energy

06/18/13 — Lindsay Miller (Ph.D'12 ME) opted to pursue graduate studies at Berkeley because of the university's reputation for groundbreaking alternative energy research and its multidisciplinary approach. As a post-doc in Paul Wright's lab, she became intrigued by the process of turning a prototype into a device ready for real-world application. “My research was trying to make wireless sensor nodes that never die - batteries that can be recharged infinitely by the energy available in the environment,” says Miller.

Engineering benchmarks for cap-and-trade

05/01/13 — The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability is helping the California Air Resources Board to develop methodologies for determining CO2 allocations for companies to help reduce the state's overall CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Physicist Art Rosenfeld to receive National Medal of Technology & Innovation

01/03/13 Berkeley Lab — President Barack Obama has named UC Berkeley and LBNL physicist Arthur Rosenfeld one of this year's 11 recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Rosenfeld is often called the “godfather of energy efficiency” because of his pioneering work on reducing the nation's energy usage.
Byung Yang Lee, Seung-Wuk Lee and Ramamoorthy Ramesh

Electricity goes viral

11/01/12 — Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a novel way to create electrical energy with the tap of a finger.
Inside a Gram Power-connected home in rural India

Prepaid power

11/01/12 — Two Berkeley alumni started a microgrid project to bring electricity to places too remote to have cost-effective connections to traditional utility-scale power grids.

Cal Energy Corps working worldwide on smart solutions

09/24/12 — Launched in 2011, the Cal Energy Corps provides undergraduates with practical research and experiential-learning opportunities through internships with partner organizations across the academic, corporate and nonprofit sectors. Modeled on the U.S. Peace Corps, the program aims to engage Berkeley students tackling alternative energy, climate change and sustainability issues around the world. This summer, 13 of the 32 Cal Energy Corps interns were Berkeley Engineers

Understanding energy by degrees

05/01/12 — A new undergraduate major in energy engineering launching fall 2012 will bring together a number of energy-related courses offered by the college, covering ethics, policy and economics.

Powerboost

05/01/12 — Artificial photosynthesis, in which solar energy is converted directly into fuel, may just have gotten an important boost.

College launches new energy engineering major

02/09/12 — The College of Engineering has launched a new major-driven largely by undergraduate interest-that focuses in a comprehensive way on the generation, transmission and storage of energy, with additional courses on energy policy. Beginning in fall 2012, the new interdisciplinary Energy Engineering major will be offered through the Engineering Science Program and extract from the best energy-related courses already offered by the College. “The objective of this major is to produce students who are well-rounded energy experts,” says Tarek Zohdi, mechanical engineering professor and chair of the Engineering Science Program.

Berkeley Lab research sparks record-breaking solar cell performances

11/07/11 Berkeley Lab — Theoretical research by scientists at LBNL has led to record-breaking sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies in solar cells. The researchers showed that, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, the key to boosting solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons but emitting more photons. "A great solar cell also needs to be a great Light Emitting Diode," says Eli Yablonovitch, the UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering who led this research.

An engineer’s duty

04/08/11 — When disaster strikes, all of us feel compelled to respond. Japan's devastating earthquake on March 11 called forth our faculty and students to help in ways only an engineer can.

Atomic fuel stored at U.S. plants poses risks similar to Japan facilities

03/18/11 Bloomberg — U.S. nuclear power plants that store thousands of metric tons of spent atomic fuel pose risks of a crisis like the one unfolding in Japan, where crews are battling to prevent a meltdown of stored fuel, nuclear safety experts said. Nuclear plants weren't designed with the intention of storing their spent fuel permanently, said Bozidar Stojadinovic, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. "The plants have always been designed with the idea that the fuel will be taken care of," Stojadinovic said. "The government promised to do that."

Race to the pump: Biofuel technologies vie to provide a sustainable supply of transportation fuels

02/14/11 Chemical & Engineering News — Chemists, chemical engineers, and synthetic biologists have largely met the technical challenge of developing biofuels to replace petroleum-derived transportation fuels in the coming decades. For biofuels to reach the U.S. market, however, these technologies have to fit into the existing transportation fuel infrastructure. Every major chemical and petrochemical firm has claimed a stake in the race to biofuel commercialization. "Because the energy industry is so large, there is room for everybody to play, as long as you can meet the economics," says Jay D. Keasling, a synthetic biologist at UC Berkeley.

Berkeley Lab’s Ashok Gadgil takes fuel efficient cookstoves to Ethiopia

02/08/11 Energy.gov — Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are using technology and innovation to bring clean-burning cookstoves to the developing world. Lead scientist Dr. Ashok Gadgil describes the partnership between the DOE lab and several non-governmental organizations including Oxfam America and the Clinton Global Initiative. Now with help from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Technology Commercialization Fund, Dr. Gadgil is bringing his latest innovation to Ethiopian households.