EETD Communications

What: International Workshop on Advances in Cool Roof Research: Protocols, Standards & Policies for Accelerated Aging

When: Thursday, July 28 – Friday, July 29

Where: Doubletree Hotel at Berkeley Marina, Berkeley, California

This two-day workshop is sponsored by the Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Concordia University, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

It will address accelerated soiling and weathering methods for roofing materials; incorporation of accelerated age ratings into policies, standards, and rating systems; and other topics, such as marketplace trends in cool roofing.

To register, please view the workshop website or download the one-page flier to learn more.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will present a live webcast titled Labs, Data Centers, and High-Tech Facilities on July 7, 2011, from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. EDT.

Experts Dale Sartor and Paul Mathew of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Will Lintner of DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), will present best practices to meet Federal mandates to improve the energy performance of laboratories, data centers, and other high-tech facilities and examine trends across these facilities.

The instructors will review:

• The benefits and potential cost savings of energy efficiency improvements
• Best practices and technologies to increase efficiency, with an emphasis on:
  • IT equipment & software
  • Air management systems, temperature control, free & liquid cooling
  • Hoods, ventilation/air changes, and HVAC
  • Plugloads, power supplies, and storage
• Improved operations, benchmarking, and performance metrics
• Tools and resources to support your efforts.

Participants are encouraged to email or call in their questions before and during the program to receive tailored advice from the experts during the live “Q&A” segment. Questions submitted before the program can be sent to FTS@energyworkshops.org.

The 90-minute training is free of charge, but you must register in advance to obtain an Internet URL for the presentation. Register to attend the seminar.

FEMP First Thursday Seminars are no cost training opportunities to help Federal energy, environmental, and fleet professionals plan and execute projects to help meet Federal goals and requirements. This upcoming session will benefit professionals seeking an introduction to the latest energy efficient measures for high performance laboratories and data centers.

For more information, visit the FEMP First Thursday Seminars website.

Join the clean energy conversation on Facebook at DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Energy Savers, and Solar Decathlon pages.

You can hear Ashok Gadgil, Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, discuss a technology for inexpensively removing contaminants from the water, on “The Story,” an NPR radio show. Here’s the web page:

http://thestory.org/archive/The_Story_62111.mp3/view

Here’s the MP3:

http://thestory.org/archive/The_Story_62111.mp3

And if you speak French, here’s an article about UV Waterworks, a device for inexpensively disinfecting water, on Etat Nature: http://www.etatnature.com/juin2011/eau.php

More information about Gadgil’s invention: http://eetd.lbl.gov/l2m2/waterworks.html

The National Center for Atmospheric Research has published the following press release. One of the authors, a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, participated in this work while a graduate student at Cornell University.

BOULDER—Everything has its price, even the weather. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billon in the United States.

The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

“It’s clear that our economy isn’t weatherproof,” says NCAR scientist Jeff Lazo, the lead author. “Even routine changes in the weather can add up to substantial impacts on the U.S. economy.”

Read the rest: http://www2.ucar.edu/news/4810/economic-cost-weather-may-total-485-billion-us

News media interested in this story are invited to contact:

David Hosansky, NCAR/UCAR Media Relations

303-497-8611

hosansky@ucar.edu

Rachael Drummond, NCAR/UCAR Media Relations

303-497-8611

rachaeld@ucar.edu

The future of energy-efficient lighting, many experts will tell you, is the solid-state LED (light-emitting diode). You have already begun to see these tiny, bead-like lights in special applications such as traffic signals, exit signs, automotive headlights, and lightweight flashlights. Maybe you have begun to see them in high-end ambient room lighting applications, such as energy-efficient desk lamps and kitchen underlights.

“The common view,” says Francis Rubinstein, a scientist and energy-efficient lighting expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, “is that LED lighting is replacing fluorescent lighting with the same inevitability that mammals replaced dinosaurs as the dominant large life forms on Earth.”

Ongoing research at national laboratories and in the lighting industry is focusing on improving the light output, lifetime, and durability of LEDs, as well as driving their costs down. Many lighting experts expect that LEDs will eventually be used widely in general lighting applications, replacing inefficient incandescent bulbs, as well as energy-efficient fluorescent lamps (both the linear and compact varieties). LEDs have the potential to be more energy-efficient than fluorescent lights.

But wait, says Rubinstein, who has been delivering a talk to lighting industry audiences titled “Why Fluorescent Lighting Isn’t Dead.” He believes that modern fluorescent lighting will continue to dominate the general lighting market and that solid-state LED lighting will coexist in the marketplace with fluorescent lighting for some time to come. Rubinstein sees a near-term future in which LED and fluorescent lighting coexist in hybrid systems that will be more adaptable to the lighting needs of a wide variety of residential, commercial, and industrial building types and space configurations.

Read the rest:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/newsletter/nl35/eetd-nl35-6-fluorescent.html

Berkeley Lab researcher played significant role in development of ISO 50001

A significant new standard to help organizations save energy, “ISO 50001 Energy management systems - Requirements with guidance for use,” was released today by the International Organization for Standardization.

ISO 50001 can be used by any organization to manage its energy use. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, its developers estimate that the standard could influence up to 60% of the world’s energy use. The standard was developed by the ISO project committee PC 242 Energy management, with the chairmanship held by the United States and Brazil.

Aimee McKane, a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has had a central role in developing the standard. Her work on the standard began with an analysis of the existing national energy management standards for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in early 2007, and continues as Vice-Chair to the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO PC 242.

ISO 50001 provides organizations with an internationally recognized framework for efficiently managing and improving their energy performance. “The standard is based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to continual improvement,” says McKane. “It supports energy performance improvement over time based on the best data available to the organization.”

Continual improvement of energy performance requires a comprehensive energy management system involving a variety of stakeholders, McKane notes. The standard does not prescribe minimum performance criteria, energy reductions, or targets. However, she says, many countries, including the United States, are developing programs to recognize organizations that achieve specified energy performance improvement targets.

To ensure that U.S. companies and organizations derive the greatest possible benefit from ISO 50001, the U.S. Department of Energy is working with standards authorities, energy management experts, and industry representatives to create a supportive framework for implementation. Activities include:

• Developing a training curriculum for ISO 50001 implementation experts.
• Developing requirements and credentialing auditors to assess energy management systems for conformance to ISO 50001.
• Credentialing professionals to assist organizations in implementing ISO 50001.
• Supporting accreditation of certification bodies to manage the ISO 50001 auditing process.

For more information about DOE activities to support implementation of ISO 50001, see Superior Energy Performance Global Superior Energy Performance (GSEP), and http://www.eere.energy.gov/energymanagement.

McKane adds that the next steps for the experts responsible for creating ISO 50001 include a transition to a technical committee (ISO TC 242) with a primary focus on providing standards and technical documents necessary to support effective implementation of ISO 50001.

More information:

Aimee McKane, atmckane@lbl.gov

ISO’s press release on ISO 50001

http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1434

Download an ISO publication about the standard:

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_50001_energy.pdf