Berkeley

The average cost of energy savings to investor-owned utilities (IOU) and other programs in a dozen states has remained steady in the last six years, tracking well below the cost of natural gas, according to a new study by theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley).

In what could be the first of a series of legal actions, the California Restaurant Association (CRA) has filed a lawsuit against the city of Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new buildings, arguing it is illegal and hurts business in the San Francisco area college town.

Berkeley, CA, the center of college student protests more than a half-century ago, has become the first U.S. city to ban the use of natural gas in new construction, effective at the beginning of next year.

University of California, Berkeley chemists who think a “metal-organic framework” (MOF) may be a method to simplify and increase the range of natural gas vehicles (NGV) published their findings online recently in advance of a report appearing in the journal Nature.

A University of California, Berkeley, physicist is urging environmentalists to abandon their opposition to the development of unconventional natural gas and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) because shale gas is a “wonderful gift” to the world and the only way to displace coal.

President-elect Barack Obama has picked Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, to be secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) in his administration, and has selected experienced regulators to oversee three other offices dealing with energy, environmental and climate-change issues, Washington sources said. No formal announcement had been issued Thursday morning.