The clean energy commute of the future could come from research conducted at facilities like Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, where Rizia Bardhan is helping to develop new hydrogen storage materials. She recently earned a spot on Forbes’ list of 30 people under 30 who are rising stars in science.

The biggest challenge with hydrogen-powered fuel cells lies in the storage of hydrogen: how to store enough of it, in a safe and cost-effective manner, to power a vehicle for 300 miles? Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is aiming to solve this problem by synthesizing novel materials with high hydrogen adsorption capacities.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to change the status quo by reviving the study of rare earths to better understand how to extract them, use them more efficiently, reuse and recycle them and find substitutes for them.

Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) researchers have determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of a protein that is key to boosting the microbial-based production of bisabolane as a clean, green and renewable biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel fuel.

Strains of E. coli bacteria were engineered to digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The switchgrass, which is among the most highly touted of the potential feedstocks for advanced biofuels, was pre-treated with ionic liquid, a key to the success of this study.

Introducing a special corn gene into switchgrass was found to significantly boost the viability of the switchgrass biomass as a feedstock crop for advanced biofuels. The gene, a variant of the Corngrass1 gene, holds the switchgrass in a perpetual juvenile state, more than doubling its starch content and making it easier to convert its polysaccharides into fermentable sugars.

Theoretical research by Berkeley Lab scientists has led to record-breaking efficiencies in solar cells. The research showed that, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, the key to solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons but emitting more photons.

New materials are crucial to building a clean energy economy—for everything from batteries to photovoltaics to lighter weight vehicles—but today the development cycle is too slow: around18 years from conception to commercialization. To speed up this process, a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) teamed up to develop a new tool, called the Materials Project, which launches this month.

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute have developed the first genome-scale model for predicting the functions of genes and gene networks in a grass species. Called RiceNet, this systems-level model of rice gene interactions should help speed the development of new crops for the production of advanced biofuels, as well as help boost the production and improve the quality of one of the world’s most important food staples.

Berkeley Lab researchers will play major roles in three new cutting-edge energy research projects being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). These three projects entail the development of tobacco as a source of biofuels, creation of a personalized system for reducing customer demands for electrical power when the grid is congested, and development of a commercial process for extracting biofuels from the resin of pine trees.