The Green Enterprise: UC Berkeley

Sumi Das: Hello, I am Sumi Das for ZDNet. The University of California, Berkeley is a school with a strong reputation for environmental responsibility and sustainability. Today, we are going to talk to Berkeley researchers. They are going to show the green innovations they are developing on campus and for the community at large. It is on next on the Green Enterprise.

From climate protection practices to renewable energy research to recycling and waste management, Berkeley scientists and its students are hard at work developing green innovations and will help create a sustainable future. On the Berkeley campus, students are participating in all kinds of green initiatives, such as composting and recycling at the university cafeteria and creating eco friendly dorm rooms.

And at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the school's government partner, researchers are inventing new technologies that will one day help the environment. Dan Kammen is an expert in the field of energy policy. We sat down with him to talk about the green plans at the school and the research taking place with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Sumi: Dan, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dan Kammen: It is a pleasure to be here.

Sumi: So we see students milling about here and the campus looks no different than when I went to school here, I won't say how many years ago, but a while ago. Tell us about the green initiatives on campus?

Dan: There are, the students have taken a lead on a whole range of things, from greening individual buildings to doing audits of how much energy efficiencies taking place. Are we using the best light bulbs? Do we have the best timers? Are we using the waste heat to go back in to heat buildings as well as installing solar?

And the students on this campus are taking the lead and acquiring solar panels from companies that were going out of business, companies that were offering educational specials and installing them all to such an extent that the Chancellor in recognition of all this, formed a sustainability council, largely run by the students, that has actually put Berkeley campus out ahead of the state's already aggressive climate plans.

So the state will actually achieve its goals in 2020, we hope, and campus will achieve those same goals six years earlier, to try to be a place to learn and try out ways to use energy more efficiently, to integrate more wind and solar into the mix, to use hydrogen, to do a variety of things, to really test out the things that we are going to need statewide and Fed really to green our economy.

Sumi: Why does the University of California have such a huge interest in green strategies?

Dan: Well, the State of California has been a leader in these things for decades. Back to the OPEC energy crisis in the '70s when California decided to really cut its need for fossil fuels and to green the economy. That became a hallmark of what a lot of researchers did here. And a number of units were formed on the campuses to support that.

So my main department at the energy and resources group is really a place where you bring these things together. It is not just economists or physicists or chemists or engineers, it is really a mix of all of those. So in that sort of larger mix of types of researchers, Berkeley has become a real hub for these things.

It has always been a place where we have studied renewable energy, climate change issues, fossil fuel economy, but in the last few years with the huge increase in interest in these areas, it also has become a magnet for big, big federal and private grants to work on different aspects of how clean we can make our energy system.

Sumi: You also have a partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, how are you involved with them?

Dan: Well, I'm working with them in a number of levels. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab was really an outgrowth of research going on in campus in the '40s and '50s on basic science areas, initially working on atomic bomb project and then working on advance in physics and chemistry. And energy has always been part of their interest area.

For a long time, there was basic science work and work on how efficient can you make buildings, how green can you get them. Many of my students over the years will spend part of their time working with colleagues up at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, "up on the hill" as we call it here, and then sharing projects, some are more applied, some are more basic.

And what has happened in the last few years though is that the lab has taken energy has a much more central part of its mission. So we have applied for some very large joint contracts.

Sumi: So you have a number of different green initiatives, what are your strategies for driving them forward?

Dan: Well, the ultimate goal is fairly far off. Right now, we know scientifically that we are going to need to cut greenhouse gas emissions globally, not just on UC Berkeley campus, by 80%. And no one really knows how to get all the way there, because we haven't even begun to cut emissions yet, we are still growing right now. And so a lot of faculty on this campus are interested in that goal of climate stabilization.

And in fact, when we formed the Berkeley institute environment, more faculty on this campus identified their work as related to the environment than I think anybody anticipated. Some 300 faculty out of the over 1000 here said environment was part of their work in some way. So there was a huge faculty interest.

The students at Berkeley have a history of being activists and that is a good history and they have applied it to energy and climate issues. It has also been a place where because the state has always been very receptive to new ideas about how to make the economy more green, that work here translates pretty quickly into action.

Sumi: So you have told us a lot about the green initiatives that are going on here at the University of California. Now we are going to take a look and actually see them in action, so thanks for taking the time today.

Dan: It is a pleasure. You should enjoy looking around.

Sumi: I will.

We are on the roof of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union where they have installed solar panels in order to help power the building. Joining us now is Tom Spivey.
You know a little bit more about this installation, how do these solar panels help the campus be more sustainable?

Tom Spivey: Solar panels generate their peak power between 10 a.m. and two p.m. each day, so as the sun comes through the arc of the sky, it actually creates the most voltaic energy at that time, maximum of 60 kilowatts. When the California ISO grid is very taxed and heavy, this solar array is generating peak power, and actually returns power to the building so it doesn't draw off the grid.

Sumi: OK, so we know, the sun hits the panels: that generates energy. But explain to me how it works.

Tom: What it does is: it actually pulls power directly into the building from the panels and does not go to the grid, and so therefore, we offset the power that we'd normally draw from PG&E.

Sumi: Give us the quick specs. How much power are we talking about here?

Tom: This unit here generates a little less than 100, 000 kWh a year, and it generates 450 kW a day.

Sumi: Tom, thank you very much! Our tour of UC Berkeley continues.

Sumi: College students are notorious for their appetites, and here at Berkeley, even the cafeteria is green. Shawn Lapean is director of Cal Dining, and we're here in Crossroads Dining Commons. Tell us about the vision for this building. It's not your ordinary, run of the mill cafeteria.

Shawn Lapean: It's definitely not your run of the mill cafeteria. It was built from a green design: lots of windows, a lot of light, a lot of space. We measure, per meal, how much resources we use in the building, to try to make sure that we're doing the right thing for the environment and for the community at Berkeley.

The hoods that we have in all our different grills and pizza ovens and things like that, shut off automatically when not being used. So we try to make sure that all the resources in the things that we utilize here for the thousands of students we serve here every day, that we're doing the best to save as much as we can, so that we can do what we're supposed to do for the environment.

Sumi: While the school is supporting many green initiatives on campus, they're also partnering with the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab on green innovations that will help the community, like this new Molecular Foundry Building.

Sumi: We want to talk about the state of the art design concepts that went into the construction of this building. What makes it a green building?

Carolyn Bertozzi: Well, the Molecular Foundry is built with recycled materials whenever possible. The architecture includes state of the art energy conservation devices: air management, air cooling and heating, water flow, water treatment. So the greenness of the building extends all the way from the materials we used to construct it, to the engineering of the building.

Sumi: So give me some of the specifics of the materials.

Carolyn: Well, the tiling on the outside of the building is made with recycled aluminum. Inside the building, the floors in some areas are tiled with bamboo, which is a renewable, sustainable wood. Up on the laboratory floors, we have a rubber tiling, which is made from recycled rubber. In fact, it's recycled car tires. And of course, the engineering of the building was designed so that we have the lowest use of energy, with respect to air cooling, air handling. We try to think of all aspects of construction, to usage, to long term sustainability.

Sumi: So, now that we know a little bit more about the exterior of the building and how it was constructed, we're actually going to focus more on the research that's going on inside, which is green as well!

Sumi: Inside the Molecular Foundry, tech research is being conducted in everything from hydrogen storage to microbiology. They're also developing the next generation of solar cells. Different from silicon materials used at the school's Student Union, these cells are made of plastic.

Sumi: Dave Cadillac is a researcher with the Solar Lab.

Dave Cadillac: Our research is focused on taking organic plastics, and trying to convert sunlight into electricity, because we're going to be able to make solar cells that are much more lightweight, flexible, and cheaper.

And so, you can start thinking about portable solar cells for your laptop, or for your car, or something similar. So what we're seeing today is how I go about making a plastic solar cell for research purposes. And so we're going to see the spin coating process, where I spin out this plastic polymer from a solution, and it dries on the film.

[Buzzing sound.] I'm going to spin it, and it's going to give me an ultra thin layer of polymer. You can watch as it dries, the polymers align together, and you'll get a color change, right there, and that's the plastic.

So, this is our finished product, and what we've done is we've just taken our plastic solar cell and we've added some electrodes on top. Then we can put it underneath our solar simulator here, and shine simulated sunshine on the cell and test it, and see how well it works.

Sumi: As we continue exploring Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, we find ourselves sitting in front of the Windows Test Bed Facility.

Sumi: What are we looking at here? What do these do?

Allan Chen: Well, this is a laboratory that was especially constructed to test the next generation of advanced windows. The windows that are installed in there now that you can see behind us are called electrochromic windows.

Sumi: What's their purpose? What do they do?

Allan: Well, the idea behind the electrochromic window is that it will lighten and darken dynamically, in response to changing outdoor conditions. We can use these windows to save energy in buildings, by dynamically allowing more light to come inside the buildings when there's less light outside.

Sumi: What are the applications for these windows?

Allan: We expect to see these windows appear first in large commercial buildings. They are very expensive. They require control circuitry and so forth, and so their most economic use will probably be first in new large commercial buildings. Then later on, in retrofitting the existing commercial buildings, and eventually, perhaps, residential buildings as well.

Sumi: As you've just seen, the University and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are committed to exploring the latest green technologies. Stay tuned. In the weeks ahead, we'll show you how other organizations are going green.