The following stories include news articles, events and announcements about and by RAEL lab members.
Media
Coal Power Loses Its Luster in India as Costs Rise
July, 2012
National Geographic
Along India's narrow coastal belt of Mundra in Gujarat State, 500 miles (805 kilometers) northwest of Mumbai, several coal-fired power plants generate electricity so cheaply that authorities for the most part have overlooked damage to fishing and grazing, and harm to the vulnerable mangrove ecosystem.
It is here that Tata, India's giant conglomerate and largest private electric utility, has been building what it hopes will be one of the largest coal power plants in the world, the 4,000-megawatt Tata Mundra. It is one of nine such "ultra-mega" plants being built across India.
Dan Kammen's race against climate change
June, 2012
AAAS
A mile up a steep, tree-lined hill sits the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory in Berkeley, California. It’s early morning and Daniel Kammen, RAEL’s director, founder, and one of the world’s foremost experts on renewable energy, has arrived in jeans, sandals and a green T-shirt that reads “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Run.”
Kammen has to run. To avoid the most drastic effects of climate change, scientists generally agree that the world has only a few decades to stabilize atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations at 450 parts-per-million. Meanwhile 1.5 billion people on the globe lack access to electricity. Providing reliable, clean energy to the poor while accelerating green power investments in the developed world is a task for Atlas.
Dr. Kammen is the Lead Scholar for the Fulbright NEXUS Program!
June, 2012
US Department of State
"The U.S. Department of State is pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel M. Kammen, Professor and Founding Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will be the 2012-2013 Fulbright NEXUS Lead Scholar. Dr. Kammen will lead a group of up to 20 Department of State-sponsored Fulbright scholars from across the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, who will spend one year addressing public policy challenges through international exchanges, seminars, and collaborative research. The scholars will focus on three primary areas—science, technology and innovation; entrepreneurship; and sustainable energy—with a particular focus on climate change adaptation technologies.
Dr. Kammen, who received his doctorate in physics from Harvard University, played a key role in developing the interdisciplinary Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University before joining the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (2009 – 2011) and was named the first Clean Energy Fellow to the Americas in 2010.