Ever heard of California’s “Low Carbon Fuel Standard”? UC Berkeley prof Dan Kammen co-wrote it. What about the terms “cap and trade” and “carbon offsets”? Kammen helped popularize these concepts for the American public and transform the way we view energy consumption.

As director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley — where he also holds appointments in the Environmental Resources Group and the Department of Nuclear Engineering — Kammen integrates scientific, policy and business research,  then translates his research into action. He has served as Chief Technical Advisor – popularly known as the “Energy Czar” – to the World Bank and published innumerable books and academic articles.

On June 4th, Kammen will be speaking at Acterra’s Beyond Fossil Fuels lecture series about how we can shift away from carbon-based fuels using promising new technologies.

BN:  What is your connection to the Bay Area?

Kammen:  In 1998 I was Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.  The Energy and Resources Group here at Cal is world-famous, and they asked if I would be interested in joining the group.  I was, so I joined that summer.

What drew me here was not just the climate or the environment, but the people.  There are people studying climate change, people engaged in clean technologies – all kinds of wonderful, different people.

BN: How well are we doing in the Bay Area with regards to minimizing the use of fossil fuels?

"Placing a modest fee on petroleum and gas that is extracted from California can only benefit our state," said Dr. Daniel Kammen

SAN FRANCISCO -- A group of young environmentalists in California are using Earth Day to call attention to what some see as a glaring flaw in the Golden State's regulatory system: the lack of a tax on oil extraction.

This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings.
-Dan Kammen

A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.

The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)

Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

What does climate and climate change mean for the health and well-being of human populations and the environment throughout the Southwestern United States?

Chapter 12 - Energy: Supply, Demand, and Impacts shows the potential effects of climate change on energy production, consumption, and delivery—including the influence of temperature increases on different methods of electricity generation (such as from natural gas turbines, hydropower, or thermoelectric sources), on transportation systems, and on the vulnerability of energy-related infrastructure.

Growing up, I saw death, after death, after death, including both my parents, so that’s my real motivation…

-Chris Ategeka

BERKELEY — Tension-spoked wheels. Triangular metal frame. Crank-and-chain drivetrain. The bicycle is perhaps man’s simplest means of self-propelled transportation.