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Greetings! 

To begin this newsletter, it is my pleasure to welcome David Auston as the new Associate Director of the Center for Energy Efficient Materials (CEEM) at UC Santa Barbara. David brings a wealth of experience to the Center from his previous appointments, most notably as president of Case Western Reserve University and as the first president of the Kavli Foundation. 

I am also happy to report that our new Institute Seminar series has been a great success. The series has brought together speakers, students and faculty to discuss engaging topics in energy efficiency research on a weekly basis. In the next seminar, Associate Professor Chandra Kintz introduces the AppScale, an open source platform-as-service cloud fabric.

Furthermore, I am pleased to present the first talk in our free Energy Leadership Lecture series that will take place Monday, November 9th. Our speaker, Applied Materials CTO Mark Pinto, will discuss innovations in thin film materials and manufacturing techniques that have the potential to profoundly change the economics of clean energy. 

I look forward to seeing you at these events!

Kind Regards,
Dan Colbert
 

Institute News

David H. Auston Appointed to UCSB Energy Frontier Research Center Post
David H. Auston has been appointed Associate Director of the Center for Energy Efficient Materials (CEEM) at UC Santa Barbara. As associate director, Auston will be responsible for the center's strategic plan, for managing the center's research activities and programs, and for interfacing with the Department of Energy. 
"We're extremely gratified to have David join us," commented John Bowers, Director both of CEEM and of UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency. "He brings to the center deep experience and knowledge both in the science on which we're focused and in institutional administration. He is a major asset for the center."
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Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency Featured on UCTV
The Institute's Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency has been selected to feature on UCTV, a non-commercial channel featuring 24/7 programming from throughout the University of California. 
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Research Insights
The California Experiment Lays the Path to Creating an Energy Efficient Economy
by Executive Director Daniel T. Colbert

Thirty five years ago, before anyone else got it, Art Rosenfeld got it. He understood that energy efficiency was going to be the most important cog in reinvented energy machinery not only for his own State of California, but for the world. Head of California's Energy Commission since its creation in 1974, Rosenfeld's work in reducing energy consumption has been so effective that while per capita energy usage in the United States has increased by 50%, California per capita usage has stayed flat. This data, dubbed the "Rosenfeld Curve" in his honor, has inspired other states and the federal government to achieve similar savings by imitating California's programs. California's energy efficiency programs have saved taxpayers a total of $56 billion since the Commission's inception.
America's founders understood the value in letting states experiment with their own ideas and programs. However, this value is only realized if successful programs are replicated elsewhere and failures abandoned. California's experiments in energy efficiency, while not always rewarding, have been successful in aggregate and should be adopted more broadly throughout the country. Meanwhile, three groups in California - the Institute for Energy Efficiency at UC Santa Barbara, the Center for Energy Efficiency at UC Davis and the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University - are leading the next charge on the energy efficiency front. Stay tuned for more California successes leading the nation.

Click here to read "The California Experiment", an article by Ronald Brownstein in the Atlantic which inspired this commentary.
 

Faculty News

UC Santa Barbara Scientists Make Major Advance in Organic Polymer Production for Solar Cells
Professor Guillermo Bazan and a team of postgraduate researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) today announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells. Bazan's team:

    * reduced reaction time by 99%, from 48 hours to 30 minutes, and
    * more than tripled average molecular weight of the polymers.

The reduced reaction time effectively cuts production time for the organic polymers by nearly 50%, since reaction time and purification time are approximately equal in the production process, in both laboratory and commercial environments.
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