 | Professor John Quigley Discovers Green Building Pays Greenbacks | Jul 2 2008 | Everyone's talking about "going green," but in the building industry, the cost of investment has been difficult to justify - until now. Haas Professor John Quigley has undertaken the first systematic analysis of environmentally sustainable construction and its economic impact on the real estate market.
In the working paper, "Doing Well by Doing Good? Green Office Buildings," Quigley and co-authors Piet Eichholtz and Nils Kok of Maastricht University, Netherlands, determined investments in proven green building practices lead to sizable increases in a property's market value and effective rent, the average per-square-foot rent paid.
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 | Climate change could severely impact California's endemic plants | Jul 1 2008 | The native plants unique to California are so vulnerable to global climate change that two-thirds of these "endemics" could suffer more than an 80 percent reduction in geographic range by the end of the century, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study.
Because endemic species - native species not found outside the state - make up nearly half of all California's native plants, a changing climate will have a major impact on the state's unparalleled plant diversity, the researchers warn. |
| Program Funds Sustainable New Projects | Jun 25 2008 | A campus sustainability program awarded $2 million to projects as diverse as stoves that may help decrease rape in Darfur and ultraviolet light tubes that kill waterborne pathogens last week.
The Sustainable Products and Solutions Program, based in the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, funded 23 projects with a $2 million fund last week, part of a five-year, $10 million dollar gift from the Dow Chemical Company Foundation announced in October 2007.
Executive-in-Residence Tony Kingsbury, who manages the program, said the projects were chosen in part because of their multidisciplinary approach. |
 | State Calls Off Moth Spraying in Urban Areas | Jun 24 2008 | Officials from the California Department of Food and Agriculture announced last Thursday that due to health concerns and public opposition, the controversial aerial spraying aimed at eradicating the light brown apple moth will no longer be executed in urban areas this summer.
California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura announced Friday that officials will now attempt to control the pest with a method called sterile insect technique, which involves releasing sterilized moths into the infested areas. This method is expected to confuse the moths in much the same way as the aerial spray by preventing them from reproducing so that they eventually die off.
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Sprayings of the hormone in Santa Cruz and Monterey last year were followed by numerous health complaints, which opponents of the spray say is evidence that it is a danger to the public.
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 | An alliance for green prosperity? Chile and California for the Environment | Jun 23 2008 | On a visit to Berkeley and LBNL this week, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet emphasized the value of collaboration between her nation and the state of California.
Now that democracy has taken firm root in her nation, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet came to Berkeley Thursday in search of solutions to one of the fast-developing nation's most pressing challenges: how to provide its own energy. |
 | Maharashtra at the Crossroads: Berkeley Lab-Led Agreement Tackles India's Energy Shortage, Global Climate Change | Jun 23 2008 | The Indian state of Maharashtra is at a crossroads. Its people endure frequent electricity blackouts due to a booming energy demand that far outpaces energy production. One solution is to build more coal-fired power plants, which are among the chief greenhouse-gas-emitting culprits of climate change. Another solution takes a different approach: reduce electricity demand, and the need for more power plants, by implementing energy-efficiency measures.
The latter choice may have an edge, thanks to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) facilitated by Berkeley Lab scientists that aims to export California's lessons in adopting energy efficiency strategies to the state of Maharashtra. Maharashtra leads India in energy consumption.
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| CITRIS co-sponsors Copenhagen climate and energy conference as lead-in to 2009 UN meeting | Jun 22 2008 | BERKELEY – Some 250 of the world's leading climate and energy researchers, industry representatives and government leaders will convene on Thursday, June 19, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for an international research summit sponsored by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the Copenhagen Climate Council.
The conference, "Unlocking the Climate Code: Innovation in Climate and Energy," aims to identify the critical research and development achievements necessary for a successful transition to a low carbon economy. Conference participants will present and debate relevant policy and business models that can support technology innovation in carbon emissions reduction.
Nobel Laureate Steve Chu, who is a UC Berkeley physics professor, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and an outspoken advocate of research to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, will give the conference's keynote speech. |
 | San Francisco Bay area air regulators to charge businesses fees for greenhouse gas emissions | Jun 19 2008 | |
| Press Release: Students win $180,000 to tackle world's problems through Bears Breaking Boundaries contest | Jun 19 2008 | BERKELEY – Projects to help new mothers in Nigeria and orphans in Nepal, and to encourage bike sharing and energy efficiency in Berkeley, are among 50 student proposals receiving a total of $179,000 in the third annual "Bears Breaking Boundaries" competition at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Cal students have fantastic ideas for enhancing the curriculum, improving the campus, and addressing major societal challenges such as climate change and global health," said Thomas Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology and director of Big Ideas@Berkeley, a campus initiative which co-sponsors the student competition. "The contest is our version of 'American Idol' - it helps shine the spotlight on our most creative, energetic and entrepreneurial students."
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 | KQED QUEST to feature the Hydrowatch Project: Water in Motion | Jun 18 2008 | We are extremely pleased that KQED QUEST has put together a piece on the HydroWatch Project funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation. The theme of HydroWatch is water in motion. A center piece is David Culler's microclimate motes, deployed at a mini-watershed of a UC Natural Reserve. The Keck HydroWatch Story focusing on the work being done at the Angelo Coast Range Reserve is scheduled to air on KQED Quest on July 22 at 7:30 pm. The story will be available on the Quest website on July 21. |
 | Obama adviser talks green streak on climate change | Jun 18 2008 | The United States may be late to the battle against global warming and the move toward energy independence but decisive action can still save the day, a Barack Obama adviser who was stumping for the Democratic presidential candidate in Oregon said Thursday.
Daniel Kammen, senior policy adviser on energy and the environment, conducted town hall meetings in Eugene and Portland with a message balanced between fear and hope. On the one hand, the damaging effects of climate change; on the other, a raft of proposals that will cut carbon emissions, develop new sources of renewable fuels and clean technologies, and usher in an era of “green-collar” jobs.
Kammen knows a thing or two about those issues. He’s a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in energy. He’s the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory that is affiliated with the university. And he’s a lead scientist with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the groups that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
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 | Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup | Jun 18 2008 | WHAT if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard for less than you pay at the pump? Would you?
The first question has driven Floyd S. Butterfield for more than two decades. Mr. Butterfield, 52, is something of a legend for people who make their own ethanol. In 1982, he won a California Department of Food and Agriculture contest for best design of an ethanol still, albeit one that he could not market profitably at the time.
Now he thinks that he can, thanks to his partnership with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas J. Quinn. The two have started the E-Fuel Corporation, which soon will announce its home ethanol system, the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler. It will be about as large as a stackable washer-dryer, sell for $9,995 and ship before year-end.
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 | Obama Green Talk Is Gold to Silicon Valley | Jun 18 2008 | Senator Barack Obama Wednesday proposed that the federal government spend $150 billion over 10 years to promote alternative energy and create several million jobs.
...His words reverberated in Silicon Valley, which has been lobbying hard for more federal investment in clean-technology projects.
As part of his plan, the Illinois Democrat pledged that, if president, he would invest $10 billion a year in creating what he called a “Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund.” Such a fund, he said, would help finance companies involved in the alternative energy sector.
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 | Distant Relatives, Common Genes & how Studying Genetic Ancestry Leads to Green Fuel Technology | Jun 17 2008 | Biologists have long studied physical commonalities to infer ancestral relationships between animals. But the more distant the relationship, such as between humans and sponges, the trickier it is to establish connections through simple comparisons of anatomy.
Dan Rokhsar, a Berkeley professor of both physics and molecular and cellular biology, and a faculty scientist at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute, is sidestepping this problem via a different aspect of inheritance: genes.
Recently, the skyrocketing price of petroleum and the threat of global climate change have turned Rokhsar's attention toward greener subjects: plants. Now, he is not only providing new insights into our genetic heritage but also clearing a path toward a cleaner, greener future. |
 | The Living Story of Sulawesi | Jun 17 2008 | The Indonesian island of Sulawesi is a 12,000-square-mile jigsaw puzzle. During the past 25 million years, drifting tectonic plates tore four separate paleo-islands from the far corners of the South Pacific and smashed them together in a steamy corner of Southeast Asia.
This turbulent history has turned Sulawesi into a complex biological cipher. Today, it houses a mélange of species with confusing origins: some may have been passengers on the original islands, some may have arrived afterward, and some may have evolved from the mix.
Jim McGuire, curator of herpetology at Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and a professor of integrative biology, is studying how these species evolved and came to be distributed on Sulawesi today.
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