For the UC Berkeley Climate Justice course, syllabus, click here.

Meet the Laos Energy Modeling and Policy Analysis (Undergraduate!) Team: The focus of this inter-disciplinary and inter-university research group is to develop sustainable energy, water, and land-use scenarios for Laos, and to work with local stake-holders on the costs and benefits for communities, the nation, and the regional commerce in energy, water, food, timber and […]

RAEL has partnered with both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a number of other groups worldwide that are engaging the Vatican and interested partners to utilize the dialog around The Encyclical to promote equity, sustainable development and climate protection. Events in this initiative include: RAEL and Vatican publications such as: November 2, 2016 roundtable: […]

Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition Noah Kittnera,b, Felix Lillb,c and Daniel M. Kammen*a,b,d a Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA b Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA c Center for Digital Technology and Management, TU Munich, Munich, Germany d Goldman School of Public […]

The Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK) is a project partnership between RAEL and Power for All,  a global cam­paign to accel­er­ate the market-​​based growth of decen­tral­ized renew­ables as the key to achiev­ing uni­ver­sal energy access. The cam­paign, established in 2014, serves as a col­lec­tive voice for busi­nesses and civil soci­ety focused on off-​​grid renew­able […]

Our latest Property Assessed Clean Energy project features in Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6328/921.3

For the Human Needs Project full website, click on: http://www.humanneedsproject.org   Professor Kammen, serves as the CTO of the Human Needs Project, highlighted how the Kibera Town Center Project provides basic services (water, toilets, showers, laundry) and empowerment services (business skills training, micro-credit, WiFi cafe, health kiosk, green marketplace) to over 800 people per day. […]

Rapid economic growth sustained in Southeast Asia throughout the new millennium has led to a surge in large-scale infrastructure projects to facilitate industrial productivity and consumption. The state of Sarawak, located along the northern coast of the island of Borneo, is the poorest and most rural state in Malaysia but has long been a focal […]

Tiny House Competition This event is open to all colleges and universities in California. Participation promotes an interest in energy conservation, energy efficiency and green building and solar technologies. The Energy & Technology Center and Community Solar are proud to sponsor this event. “The Tiny House Competition – Build Small and Win Big” is a […]

The impacts of climate change are already being felt across Africa, leading to greater natural resource scarcity, which has contributed to violent conflict in Darfur (Sudan), Mali, and Somalia, among others. This trend is likely to continue, as Africa is projected to be among geographies most severely impacted by climate change. Though the pathway from climate change to greater natural resource scarcity to violence is not a direct one, the risks of conflict will increase as livelihoods are threatened due to greater scarcity of food, water or arable land. With lower government capacities and limited funding to adapt to climate change impacts, and a relatively weak conflict prevention/resolution architecture in place, climate change is likely to have an increasingly important impact on future conflicts in Africa. This assessment necessitates new policy planning and development thinking. Despite the threats, the broader global interest in climate change also presents significant opportunities to mobilize new interest and momentum for promoting green development in Africa. This can contribute to an effective conflict prevention strategy, and can also drive increased investment and more diversified economies, improved governance and development outcomes, and greater political stability. This project aims to build the theoretical and practical case for a new model for green development, which can provide both political and economic returns, while delivering both climate sensitive and conflict sensitive development. Our 3-5 year goal is to seed and support a successful “green” pilot in a still to be selected geography in Africa. A successful pilot will require political buy-in and local political champions, as well as new external investment to support green development projects. This can serve as a model that helps demonstrate the political and economic potential of a green approach, the economic potential of a green framework to external investors, as well as effective conflict prevention. It is our hope that the model, once proven, will be scalable in other geographies.

Management team: Harrison Fraker (Co-PI), Daniel Kammen (PI), Anthony Nahas (Project Consultant) Research Motivation How to make millions of old, inefficient homes part of a clean-air, low-carbon & low resource-use future? How can block-scale solutions enable better climate-change adaptation & response strategies than individual, home solutions? How do you get block-scale inhabitant buy-in, and support […]

Many U.S. cities are taking steps to grow urban centers in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But a challenge is the significant carbon footprint of spacious suburban living, which in many areas, may be cancelling out these efforts. The report, appearing in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that about half of the country’s household carbon footprint come from people living in the suburbs, essentially cancelling out the benefits of low carbon footprint central cities. Christopher Jones and Daniel Kammen point out that U.S. households though they only comprise 4.3 percent of the global population, are responsible for about 20 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, which are driving climate change. In response, many governors and mayors across the country have pledged to reduce their states' and cities' emissions. But more information on the size and composition of household carbon footprint is needed to inform policies to make these reductions happen. A few studies have helped fill in some gaps, but they're mostly small in scale and not broadly applicable. Kammen and Jones set out to paint a bigger picture. The authors built an analytic model using national survey data to estimate average household carbon footprints for over 30,000 zip codes and 10,000 cities and towns in all fifty U.S. states. Their technique integrates a wide range of sectors, including transportation, household energy use and consumption of food, goods and services. The researchers found a number of surprising nuances in their analysis. For example, some studies have shown that more population-dense areas have lower emissions. But Jones and Kammen found that population-dense suburbs have significantly higher carbon footprints on average than lower density suburbs, and there is a huge range across cities. As a result of large spatial differences in household carbon footprints they conclude that “an entirely new approach of highly tailored, community-scale carbon management is urgently needed.” One approach is to develop communication and estimation tools for widespread use, which the authors have developed and implemented for public use at http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps and http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/carbon calculator The authors acknowledge funding from the California Air Resources Board and the National Science Foundation (grants to D. Kammen). Professor Kammen founded and directs the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory where this work was conducted. Christopher Jones is a doctoral student advised by Professor Kammen.

Abstract: With 1.4 billion people lacking electricity to light their homes or conduct business, and all of humanity (but particularly the poor) vulnerable to climate change, decarbonizing the global energy system while closing the energy access gap demands global focus and effort. Motivated by addressing the needs of the underserved, we present an analytical framework informed by historical trends and contemporary technological, social, and institutional conditions that clarifies the heterogeneous continuum of centralized on-grid electricity, autonomous mini- or community grids, and distributed, individual energy services. We find the current day is a unique moment for decentralized energy networks based on super-efficient end-use technology and low-cost photovoltaics, supported by rapidly spreading information technology, particularly mobile phones. Collectively these disruptive technology systems could rapidly increase energy access, contributing to meeting the Millennium Development Goals for quality of life, while simultaneously driving action towards low-carbon, Earth-sustaining, energy systems.

SWITCH (Solar and wind energy integrated with transmission and conventional sources) is a linear programming modeling platform used to examine least cost energy systems designed to meet specific reliability, performance and environmental quality standards.   SWITCH is a capacity expansion model that invests in new generation and transmission assets as well as in end-use and […]

The US green jobs project models the job creation capacity of the energy industry across the United States in the next decades. This model is based on an empirical approach, basing estimates of job creation on surveys of actual hiring and direct job creation in different sub-sectors of the energy industry. Relying on these data, we are then […]

From our most recent report on energy options for Kosovo (Kittner, et. al., 2015): We have developed an analytic platform to analyze the energy options, costs, and impacts for Kosovo, a nation at the forefront of the global debates over energy access and the role of fossil fuels versus cleaner energy options to meet growing demands for power. We find that a range of alternatives exists to meet present supply constraints all at a lower cost than constructing a proposed 600 MW coal plant. The options include energy efficiency measures, combinations of solar PV, wind, hydropower, and biomass, and the introduction of natural gas. A $30/ton carbon price increases costs of coal generation by at least $330 million USD. The results indicate that financing a 600 MW coal plant is the most expensive pathway to meet future electricity demand.