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Innovations

Innovations Volume 3, Issue 9, November 2009 Archive

Dean’s Message

Sustainable Energy Solutions

Sustainable Energy
Solutions

Next month, representatives from around the world will convene at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in hopes of providing the broad outline for a new agreement that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to sustainable levels. It is critical that, unlike Kyoto, the new agreement simultaneously provide for sustainable growth and energy utilization.

At a preparatory meeting cosponsored by CITRIS and the Copenhagen Climate Council in June 2008, then-LBNL director Steven Chu and I—drawing on experience from the semiconductor industry—made the argument for a carbon roadmap with all nations at the table. We suggested that the roadmap follow the three major sectors of buildings, transportation and industry.

For example, U.S. commercial and residential buildings now account for 40 percent of our annual carbon dioxide emissions and by 2030 will consume 16 percent more energy if we do nothing. This message was brilliantly articulated by ME/MSE professor Arun Majumdar, who also served as director of LBNL’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. In testimony before the U.S. Senate earlier this year, Majumdar argued that buildings need to go on an energy diet and provided a roadmap for how we can do it. He is now serving as director of ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, a new division of the U.S. Department of Energy tasked with developing game-changing solutions to sustainable energy problems while reducing  greenhouse gas emissions.

On campus, we’re putting Majumdar’s message about the building sector to work. Professor Claire Tomlin has received a major NSF grant to work on reducing the carbon footprint of campus buildings—beginning with the engineering quadrant—through a process of measurement, modeling and mitigation. Based on the California Energy Commission’s pilot project on demand response, an engineering team including CITRIS director Paul Wright, LBNL’s Mary Ann Piette and EECS professor Costas Spanos has begun outfitting Cory, Soda and Sutardja Dai Halls to enable continuous monitoring for a reduction of their energy usage and overall carbon footprints. EECS professors David Culler, Randy Katz and Seth Sanders are leading LoCal, another initiative to implement a low-calorie diet of energy for campus buildings based on intelligent interaction with the grid.

As national and world policymakers wade through difficult issues next month, Berkeley engineers are providing the roadmaps and transformative solutions to ignite new sustainable growth and create new jobs while saving the planet.

I welcome your thoughts and ideas.

S. Shankar Sastry

Dean, College of Engineering
Roy W. Carlson Professor of EECS, BioE & ME
Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies
Email Dean Sastry

Announcements & Events

Share your thoughts online! Starting this month, you can comment directly on all Innovations articles, including the Dean's Message. Also, click on "Share This" to post your favorite articles to social media outlets or email a link to your friends.

November 18: Live Webcast: Translating Technology into Cost-Effective Healthcare: Experience the second annual A. Richard Newton Global Technology Leaders Conference with a live webcast. Luminaries including Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, and Steve Burd, CEO of Safeway, will take up the question, "Can technological innovation rein in our nation's escalating health care costs?" View the webcast on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST.

In This Issue:

A Reality Check on High-Speed Rail for California

In November 2008, California voters passed a $9.95-billion bond issue to build a bullet train that would zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles via the Central Valley at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. A few months later, the Obama administration threw its heft behind the high-speed rail concept by offering nearly $10 billion to HSR projects. Clearly, many Americans are smitten with the romance of the rails. But last month, at an overflow symposium at UC Berkeley, a panel of experts in the fields of transportation engineering and city and regional planning urged caution.

See full story.

A Sea Change for Wind Farms

Twenty miles out to sea, far from seabirds and boat traffic, a 300-foot wind turbine spins in the breeze. It’s not alone. Thirty wind turbines are generating electricity in something called an offshore wind farm. Each turbine is integrated into a highly advanced floating platform and tethered by thick chains to the sea floor. Electricity flows into a giant undersea cable that extends toward shore. At 200 megawatts, this floating farm of clean energy powers more than 60,000 homes. It’s still a futuristic vision, but ocean engineers and entrepreneurs Dominique Roddier (Ph.D.’00 Naval Architecture) and Christian Cermelli (M.S.’90, Ph.D.’95 Naval Architecture) are one step closer to bringing their unique solution, WindFloat, to life.

See full story.

Boy Meets Twirl, a Bollywood Romance

Bollywood is in the building! Bioengineering undergraduates Nickesh Viswanathan and Anwesh Thakur are two of the male dancers in red who shook up NBC-TV’s America’s Got Talent this summer with their showstopping routine to “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire. Their group, Ishaara, was the first Bollywood dance group to advance in the show’s history, making it all the way to the quarterfinals before they were eliminated.

See full story.

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