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October 2007
- Back to The Times: Revisiting The New York Times Headquarters Building Upon Its Completion
- Batteries of the Future III: Making Lithium-Ion Batteries Safer
- Berkeley Lab Scientists Contribute to Climate Change Studies that win the Nobel Peace Prize
September 2007
August 2007
- The BATT FabLab: Road to a Better Battery
- Berkeley Lab's Ultraclean Combustion Technology For Electricity Generation Fires Up in Hydrogen Tests
July 2007
May 2007
- U.S. Continues to Lead the World in Wind Power Growth
- Berkeley Lab, EPA Studies Confirm Large Public Health and Economic Impact of Dampness and Mold
April 2007
- 'Greening the Capitol' Gets Technical Assistance from Berkeley Lab
- CALGEM: Taking the Measure of California's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Building Green for China's Future
March 2007
February 2007
- Drake High School 2007 Visit
- Modeling Lithium-ion Battery Behavior
- Building Better Batteries Through Advanced Diagnostics
January 2007
- A Visit to the California Governor's Inaugural
- What Models Can (and Can't) Tell Us About Risk
- Inexpensive Wireless Lighting Could Save Money and Cut Greenhouse Gases
- A Dawning Day for Energy-Efficient Electrochromic Windows
October 2007
Back to The Times: Revisiting The New York Times Headquarters Building Upon Its Completion
Employees of The New York Times Company (The Times) began occupying their new headquarters on the west side of Manhattan in mid-2007. Three years before this milestone, The Times's facility team had approached building scientists at Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), looking for help. They were searching for reliable and affordable technologies, not yet available in the marketplace, to regulate daylight in the new building.
Batteries of the Future III: Making Lithium-Ion Batteries Safer
In recent years battery failures in laptops and cell phones — many overheating, some bursting into flame — have drawn attention to one of the biggest problems posed by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries: overcharging can lead to battery failure and chemical leakages from the battery pack, and sometimes fire and personal injury.
"Electrolyte material in these batteries is highly energetic," says EETD's Guoying Chen. "It consists of lithium salts dissolved in organic solvents, and it's flammable. Often, overcharging these batteries is what causes the problem. As the battery heats up it swells, and it can burst into flame."
Berkeley Lab Scientists Contribute to Climate Change Studies that win the Nobel Peace Prize
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were important contributors to the research on global climate change that has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
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September 2007
Reducing Our Carbon Footprint: A Low-Energy House in Berkeley, Kabul and Washington DC
Science at the Theater
Berkeley Repertory Theater
Berkeley, California
September 17, 2007
A talk by EETD scientist Rick Diamond on low-energy houses.
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August 2007
The BATT FabLab: Road to a Better Battery
The better transportation battery — a battery for hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles — needs to be lighter than today's battery, store more charge, and last through more charge-discharge cycles. Also, it needs to be safe, affordable, and compact enough to fit under the hood.
Berkeley Lab's Ultraclean Combustion Technology For Electricity Generation Fires Up in Hydrogen Tests
An experimental gas turbine simulator equipped with an ultralow-emissions combustion technology called LSI has been tested successfully using pure hydrogen as a fuel — a milestone that indicates a potential to help eliminate millions of tons of carbon dioxide and thousands of tons of NOx from power plants each year.
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July 2007
Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious 2007 R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances
Three of R&D Magazine's prestigious R&D 100 Awards for 2007, which recognize the 100 most significant proven technological advances of the year, have gone to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their colleagues.
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May 2007
U.S. Continues to Lead the World in Wind Power Growth
The Department of Energy has released its annual report on "U.S. Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends 2006." The primary authors are Ryan Wiser and Mark Bolinger of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division, with contributions from EETD's Galen Barbose and Andrew Mills. The report describes the rapid growth in U.S. wind power installations. In 2006, U.S. wind power capacity grew 26 percent, an investment of more than $3.7 billion.
DOE Press Release
Download the report
Photo credit:
Mike McNickle
Berkeley Lab, EPA Studies Confirm Large Public Health and Economic Impact of Dampness and Mold: They estimate that number of asthma cases attributable to exposure in home is 4.6 million, at $3.5 billion annual cost
A pair of studies to be published in the journal Indoor Air have quantified the considerable public health risks and economic consequences in the United States from building dampness and mold.
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April 2007
'Greening the Capitol' Gets Technical Assistance from Berkeley Lab
The House of Representatives of the United States Congress has decided to set an example by reducing its carbon footprint, an announcement which came from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and colleagues on April 19. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) provided technical assistance to House staff as they developed their plans.
CALGEM: Taking the Measure of California's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
To play its part in reducing the consequences of global warming, the state of California has embarked on a trailblazing effort to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Assembly Bill 32, recently passed by the California legislature and signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, requires the state to substantially reduce GHG emissions by the year 2030 — and, by the summer of 2008, to develop a plan for accomplishing this.
Building Green for China's Future
If all goes well, when the Summer Olympics opens in Beijing in 2008 visitors will see a new, green Olympic athletes' center built expressly for this international event. The state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly building is being planned now with technical consultation from a group of U.S. energy-efficient building experts led by Joe Huang, of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD).
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March 2007
Berkeley Lab Researchers Are Developing Energy-Efficient Digital Network Technology
Scientists are working with at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are working with industry to develop technologies to make electronic networks — whether they are used for the Internet, consumer electronics, or both — more energy-efficient. They are also developing specifications and information programs to speed the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in the marketplace.
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February 2007
Drake High School 2007 Visit
Juniors in the SEA-DISC (Studies of the Environment Academy - Drake Integrated Studies Curricula) program of San Francis Drake High School (San Rafael) have been visiting the Environmental Energy Technologies Division annually since the late 1990s to learn about energy-efficient technology development. This year, 28 juniors and two teachers came on February 28th. In the morning, they performed a lab exercise on the physics of energy-efficient cool roof technology with instruction from Roland J. Otto, former director, now retired, of Berkeley Lab's Center for Science and Engineering Education.
Modeling Lithium-ion Battery Behavior
The next generation of batteries in your car is coming from laboratories—and from computer models. Advanced battery development is no longer just a question of trial and error engineering; scientists increasingly use computer models to design the best possible battery.
Building Better Batteries Through Advanced Diagnostics
Lithium ion batteries are already among the most popular for portable electronics, having a superior energy-to-weight ratio and a slow loss of charge when not in use. To be commercially viable for transportation, however, Li-ion batteries will need to last 10 to 15 years; their cost will have to be significantly reduced and their safety improved.
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January 2007
A Visit to the California Governor's Inaugural
On January 4, staff members of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and other Lab staff, journeyed to Sacramento to participate in the pre-inaugural festivities marking the second term of California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. An all-day fair held on the lawn in front of the state capital was an opportunity for the public to learn something about California's industries, agriculture, and educational and research institutions.
What Models Can (and Can't) Tell Us About Risk
Scientists use computer models to estimate how pollutants distribute themselves in the environment. How far can we trust these models? How much can they tell us about health risks, and what are their limits? EETD's Thomas McKone talks about these issues, and his work on National Academy of Science panels that address risk assessment.
Inexpensive Wireless Lighting Could Save Money and Cut Greenhouse Gases
WiLight is a new wireless lighting control system that dims or switches overhead lighting according to the occupants' preferences, or in response to building-wide demand. Developed by two EETD researchers, Francis Rubinstein and Dennis DiBartolomeo, WiLight was designed to be low cost, to encourage building owners to retrofit facilities for energy efficiency.
A Dawning Day for Energy-Efficient Electrochromic Windows
To help EC windows realize their potential to save energy in California and throughout the U.S., DOE and the California Energy Commission funded Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division to conduct a three-year field test of EC windows in a realistic office-building setting. This test, along with other tests and computer simulations, was intended to allow the Berkeley Lab researchers to quantify the performance of EC windows and refine the system to improve its performance and reliability.
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