News

TreeHugger.com features the Heat Island Group's Cool Cars project, noting the benefits of solar reflective car coatings.See the full post here.... Read more

Nearly all cars sold in California have air conditioners. Cars painted with reflective coatings stay cooler in the sun and are easier to air condition to a comfortable temperature, according to a recent study by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division."Solar reflective paints can decrease the ‘soak' temperature of the air in a car that has been parked in the sun.... Read more

The Daily Californian documents ongoing work on the global cooling benefits of reflective roofs being conducted by Heat Island Group scientists Surabi Menon, Marc Fischer, and Francisco Salamanca. Read the full article here.... Read more

LBNL researchers Surabi Menon and Marc Fischer lead a DOE-sponsored project to explore the effects of pollution on cool roof benefits in India.See the full Berkeley Lab feature here.... Read more

Berkeley Lab features a Heat Island Group study on the potential benefits of cool-colored car shells.View the feature here.... Read more

Past work by Heat Island Group Postdoctoral Fellow George Ban-Weiss, describing how Central Park and other urban green spaces contribute to global cooling, has been featured on various platforms in recent weeks.Roger Pielke, Sr. wrote this post reviewing Ban-Weiss et al. (2011) on his Climate Science blog on 9/16/2011.The Daily Californian discussed the study in this article on 9/20/2011.Grist... Read more

Researchers, government agencies, and roofing manufacturers from around the world gathered in Berkeley last month (July 28-29, 2011) to discuss the latest research on cool roofs. These solar reflective materials reduce energy use, and help cool the planet by reflecting sunlight to outer space. Their use has begun to soar in markets around the world thanks to their economic and environmental... Read more

If you read the Doonesbury comic strip on Sunday, August 7, you might have seen Michael Doonesbury and Bernie discussing cool white roofs. Cool roofs are an energy-efficient technology developed here in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The characters also mention in passing a global initiative to help cool the earth by... Read more

Click here to read the "Doonesbury" comic that is all about white roofs.... Read more

The International Workshop on Advances in Cool Roof Research is a two day workshop that is focused on the specific protocols, standards, & policies for accelerated aging.Doubletree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina, in Berkeley CaliforniaThursday, July 28th - Friday, July 29th.Click here to download presentationsWorkshop topicsAccelerated soiling and weathering methods for roofing... Read more

What: International Workshop on Advances in Cool Roof Research: Protocols, Standards & Policies for Accelerated AgingWhen: Thursday, July 28 - Friday, July 29Where: Doubletree Hotel at Berkeley Marina, Berkeley, CaliforniaThis two-day workshop is sponsored by the Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Concordia University, and the US... Read more

Heat Island Group researchers Dev Millstein and Surabi Menon publish a paper on the increasing prominence of cool roofs and photovoltaic arrays, as well as their effects on regional climate. Read the full article here.... Read more

Washington, DC — The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have joined with Dow Chemical Company as part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to fund key research that will help develop the next generation of cool roof technologies in the U.S. The agreement will support research to... Read more

Cool-colored roofing materials, developed by researchers at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, are showcased at a new outdoor display of green technologies just opened in the city of San José just across the street from City Hall.The San José Green Vision Green Energy Showcase kicked off on Wednesday with a ceremony attended by San José Mayor Chuck Reed, Vipin Gupta, a Technical... Read more

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a series of initiatives underway at the Department of Energy to more broadly implement cool roof technologies on DOE facilities and buildings across the federal government. Cool roofs use lighter-colored roofing surfaces or special coatings to reflect more of the sun's heat, helping improve building efficiency by reducing cooling costs... Read more

Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and Art Rosenfeld, California Energy Commissioner, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Berkeley Lab scientist, have proposed a "Cool World" plan that would use white roofs, and solar-reflective roofs of other colors, to reduce... Read more

The Economist magazine has named California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld recipient of one of this year's Innovation Awards. The weekly British magazine awards Innovation awards in several areas; Rosenfeld won the award in the "Energy and the Environment" sector. A former Berkeley Lab scientist, Rosenfeld was director of the Center for Building Science (Environmental Energy Technologies... Read more

Employees of The New York Times Company (The Times) began occupying their new headquarters on the west side of Manhattan in mid-2007. Three years before this milestone, The Times's facility team had approached building scientists at Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), looking for help. They were searching for reliable and affordable technologies, not yet available in... Read more

To help EC windows realize their potential to save energy in California and throughout the U.S., DOE and the California Energy Commission funded Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division to conduct a three-year field test of EC windows in a realistic office-building setting. This test, along with other tests and computer simulations, was intended to allow the Berkeley Lab... Read more

A unique new type of energy-saving window material developed by scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab has been recognized with a 2004 R&D 100 Award. Given by R&D Magazine, the awards have been called "the Oscars of technology." The addition of this winner, and an R&D 100 award won by another Lab division (Materials Sciences for their work on... Read more

The race is on to develop the next generation of energy-efficient windows, and it has a new entrant: transition-metal switchable mirrors (TMSMs). TMSMs are glass panels with a coating capable of switching back and forth between a transparent state and a reflective one.... Read more

The New York Times Company and Berkeley Lab's EETD have begun a cooperative research project to test new technologies to increase the energy-efficiency of the new building and to improve the indoor environment for the comfort of its occupants.... Read more

The Advanced Window Systems Test Facility was built to test new window technology that will increase energy savings and occupant comfort.... Read more