Energy costs K-12 schools in the U.S. $6 billion dollars annually. Spending less money on energy costs would leave more for funding-constrained school districts to spend on educating their students, according to researchers at Berkeley Lab Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD). They have released a guide on planning and financing comprehensive energy upgrades that involve multiple measures and are targeted toward achieving significant and persistent energy savings.

Designing a building holistically, and making sure that its components and systems work together according to design intent, can pay big dividends in energy savings and occupant satisfaction, according to a study of The New York Times Building by Berkeley Laboratory. A Berkeley Lab research team began working with the Times Company in 2003 to design, evaluate and specify an integrated solution with energy-efficient lighting and automated shading systems for the windows in a full-scale mockup at a nearby Times Company site in Queens.

California’s residential ventilation requirements in Title 24 (the State energy code for buildings) are designed to balance healthy home ventilation with efficient energy use, but some studies suggest that whole-house ventilation systems don’t always meet their expected performance in either category. Commissioning a systematic evaluation of the installed system to identify deficiencies and offer solutions [...]

Spending on energy efficiency programs funded by electric and natural gas utility customers will double by 2025 to about $9.5 billion per year, according to projections published by researchers at Berkeley Lab. These funds, which come from a charge on utility bills, historically constitute the nation’s largest source of spending on programs to foster the adoption of more efficient products and buildings. The new report shows energy efficiency programs funded by utility customers are projected to continue expanding beyond the traditional bastions of energy efficiency in the Northeast and West.

Berkeley Lab broke ground on the start of construction for the Facility for Low-Energy eXperiments on Buildings (FLEXLAB). Like a life-size set of building blocks, FLEXLAB is the first of its kind in both size and scope, and will allow researchers and manufacturers to test building systems and components under “real-world” conditions.

Two Berkeley Lab research projects were awarded grants by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to advance energy technologies. The two grants total nearly $5 million. One will focus on smart window technologies and the other on thermal mapping of buildings.

The installed price of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2011 and through the first half of 2012, according to the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report produced by Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. Recent installed price reductions are attributable, in large part, to dramatic reductions in PV module prices, which have been falling precipitously since 2008.

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’s Heat Island Group has converted a portion of a new temporary parking lot at Berkeley Lab into a cool pavement exhibit. Cool pavements reflect as much as 30 to 50 percent of the sun’s energy, compared to only 5 percent for new asphalt (and 10 to 20 percent for aged asphalt).

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has named John D. Elliott as its first Chief Sustainability Officer, a new position that underscores the importance of energy efficiency and sustainable practices within the same institution where scientists have pioneered resource-sparing technologies for decades.
In his new position, reporting to Deputy Laboratory Director Horst Simon, Elliott will provide [...]