Photovoltaics research represents one of the greatest opportunities to impact the climate change and energy security problems that we face today. Over 1.5×10^22 J (15,000 EJ) of solar energy reach Earth everyday, compared to a daily energy consumption of approximately 1.3 EJ by human activity. The potential for new 4-, 5-, and 6-junction solar cell architectures, capable of greater than 70% efficiency in theory, to reach practical efficiencies over 50% is highly leveraging for the economics of concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems.

Fiber Optic Communication technology trends towards integer increases in capacity and per bit power efficiency will be presented. Past and present Fiber Optic Communication technologies in datacom applications will be reviewed, as well as current development and standards activities. Also presented as background will be a summary of comparable past trends in wireline and wireless communication. Examples of successful optical interfaces will be provided.

In response to President Obama’s announcement on tougher fuel-efficiency standards and the subsequent prediction of the potential reduction in oil demand, the Numbers Guy from Wall Street Journal wrote on May 27, 2009 : “…..But what if drivers who find that they can go longer on a tank of gas drive more? Would all that additional driving cancel out the environmental benefits the Obama administration is seeking?”

The world is becoming increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent - in a word, 'smarter'. Organizations now have the ability to see the exact condition of practically everything in near real-time and can leverage this information to achieve financial, environmental, social, and operational benefits.This session will use case studies to provide a broad overview of how technology can be leveraged to optimize all aspects of an organization's infrastructure and operations for energy, carbon, water, and waste.

All the technologies that we hope to turn our future greener and better use material resources including some of the most exotic ones. Low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs) including Photovoltaics (PVs), wind turbines, hybrid and battery electric vehicles, fuel cells, and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) help reduce our reliance on fossil energy, while they consume various material resources including Tellurium, Indium, Gallium, Neodymium, Dysprosium, Samarium, and Lithium among others.

In this talk  we  present  a vision of Dynamic Monitoring and Decision Systems (DYMONDS) as a possible  Information Communications Technology (ICT) framework in support of sustainable energy systems. The concept rests on the idea that much could be gained by relaxing spatial and temporal decomposition assumptions underlying today's hierarchical electric power systems.

Thermoelectric materials for energy generation have several advantages over conventional power cycles including lack of moving parts, silent operation, miniaturizability, and CO2 free conversion of heat to electricity.

Imagine if all the data traveling throughout the world right now—on long distance networks and between and within computers and other hardware—could be sent through a single fiber the width of a human hair.  In this talk we will present the vision and current research being performed under a newly launched center at UCSB, whose mission is to make this a reality by developing technologies necessary for a new generation of Ethernet a thousand times faster, and much more energy efficient than the most advanced networks being deployed today.

In this talk I give an overview of the algorithms we have developed at UCSD to significantly lower the energy consumption in computing systems. We derived optimal power management strategies for stationary workloads that have been implemented both in HW and SW. Run-time adaptation can be done via an online learning algorithm that selects among a set of policies. We generalize the algorithm to include thermal management since we found that minimizing the power consumption does not necessarily reduce the overall energy costs.

This tutorial will summarize key developments at the local (i.e. California), national, and global levels with respect to the current status of the energy crisis, investments in alternative energy, the need for further research and development, and the policy and regulatory framework.  For obvious reasons, this will not be a comprehensive review.