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.

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are working on a wide variety of clean energy technologies—from biofuels to batteries to solar energy—but now these disparate efforts are being tied together with an in-depth and innovative analytical approach that will show which technologies are the most beneficial to pursue. The analysis will also give feedback to scientists before a technology hits the marketplace, allowing them to adjust and refine the technology so as to maximize its economic and environmental impact.

Some ferroelectric materials can develop extremely high voltages when light falls on them, which might greatly improve solar cells if scientists could figure out how they do it. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have solved the mystery for one ferroelectric, bismuth ferrite, revealing a principle that should apply to other materials too. The secret is an electronic “bucket brigade” that passes electrons stepwise from one electrically polarized region to the next.

Kazakhstan is a nation rich in energy resources but plagued by a history of exploitation and a legacy of environmental disasters. With an eye to a diverse economy, sustainable growth, and responsible environmental stewardship, the newly opened Nazarbayev University is establishing a national Center for Energy Research, with guidance from a diverse team of Berkeley Lab scientists.

Berkeley Lab has long pioneered new materials and new methods for making solar cells that can convert the full spectrum of sunlight to electrical energy. Now Berkeley Lab researchers and their colleagues have demonstrated a new solar cell design that not only captures the sun’s full spectrum, it is also practical to make using common manufacturing techniques in the semiconductor industry.

Making a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions will require a “science to solutions” approach in which basic scientific research is integrated into scaled-up applied technology development. National laboratories can serve as important “anchor points” in this effort said interim-Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos, at the AAAS meeting Chicago.