With nearly 25 years experience analyzing energy use in China, the China Energy Group has tailored a variety of resources to help local Chinese officials turn government mandates into practical how-to guides for understanding their energy usage and reducing their carbon dioxide emissions.

Berkeley Lab researchers helped develop the first computational model to accurately predict the interactions between flue gases and a special variety of the carbon dioxide-capturing molecular systems known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). This new model should greatly accelerate the search for new low-cost and efficient ways to burn coal without exacerbating global climate change.

At Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, scientists seeking ways to use cement more efficiently and reduce the carbon emissions associated with its manufacture have revealed new properties of the mineral tobermorite. Using x-ray-diffraction to probe the crystalline structure of Portland cement’s most important component, they squeezed the mineral in a diamond anvil cell to pressures equivalent to 100 miles deep in the Earth.

From cool roofs to automated building controls to advanced lighting systems, Berkeley Lab has implemented an assortment of measures which has resulted in a 44 percent decline in energy use intensity, or energy usage per square foot, since 1985. And greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Berkeley Lab facilities have shrunk by about 5 percent over the last two years.

In the next 40 years, California’s population is expected to surge from 37 million to 55 million and the demand for energy is expected to double. Given those daunting numbers, can California really reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as required by an executive order? Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who co-wrote a new report on California’s energy future are optimistic that the target can be achieved, though not without bold policy and behavioral changes as well as some scientific innovation.

Well before 2050, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab’s China Energy Group, China’s energy use will level off, even as its population edges past 1.4 billion. There will come a time—within the next two decades—when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak. Between 2030 and 2035, the steeply rising curve of energy demand in China will begin to moderate and flatten thereafter.

To tally the energy consumption of a city, the usual method is to add up all the energy used by residents—when they drive their car or turn on the air-conditioning—plus all the energy consumed by commercial buildings and industries in their day-to-day operations. But how should one account for the energy that went into building the office park where people work or paving the roads that people drive? And what about the energy required to make the clothes they are wearing? Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created a new energy model for Chinese cities that takes such factors into account.