Addressing climate change is a major challenge, but many people struggle to understand how their energy use translates into CO2 emissions. Part of the issue is the use of varied energy units—Calories for food, gallons for gasoline, and kilowatt-hours for electricity—making comparisons difficult.
The Ill-nitride family (AIN, GaN, InN, and their alloys) is a key semiconductor group, extensively studied over the past two decades for optoelectronics (e.g., LEDs, lasers, photodetectors). InGaN-based light emitters have revolutionized energy-efficient, eco-friendly solid-state lighting and lasing technologies. By alloying GaN with AIN, AlGaN ternary alloys with tunable direct bandgaps (3.4 eV to 6.1 eV) enable a wide UV spectral range (360 nm to 210 nm).
On Thursday, September 19 2024, Novim along with our co-sponsors, the Bren School of Environmental Management at UCSB and the UCSB Institute for Energy and Efficiency presented a forum on the issue of eliminating natural gas from the county energy mix. This forum, hosted by the UCSB Institute for Energy and Efficiency at Campbell Hall, presented acclaimed experts in the area, along with representatives of the City and County of Santa Barbara for a free informational dialog.
This year’s election will be critical in shaping the future of climate policy. Join us for an election week discussion on what the results of the 2024 election will mean for the future of our planet and our ability to address the climate crisis.
The Institute for Energy Efficiency at UC Santa Barbara invites you to attend our 2024 Emerging Technologies Review. This year, the workshop will be organized with OpenFarm to dive into Climate Risks and Smart Food Systems on Wednesday, November 20th. Please save the date and register below.
The United States' decarbonization trajectories encompass new electric loads connected to the distribution grid, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps, a massive penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs), and a more active role for consumers in generating electricity, adopting and managing energy technologies, and participating in wholesale energy and reserve markets.
Hydrogen is projected to play a significant role in the future energy mix, with the IEA forecasting an increase of almost an order of magnitude compared to hydrogen consumption today. This increase is driven by the possible dual use of hydrogen: to provide a clean or green high energy density vector as well as a clean “chemical building block” towards more circular sustainable chemical manufacturing industries.
Former UCSB undergraduates Alex Woolf and Jesse Tootell (class of 2009) will discuss the current state of the global food supply chain and pathways to decarbonization. Topics include microgrids, refrigeration controls, energy trading, electric & hydrogen vehicles, thermal energy storage, and novel cooling technology.
The energy transition requires new technology and public-private partnership to accelerate research, development, demonstration and deployment of clean energy systems. This talk will begin with an overview of research in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Energy Technologies Area. This in- cludes R&D related to demand side systems such as buildings, industry and EVs, plus energy markets and policy analysis, as well work on energy storage, supply chains, direct air capture systems, and clean hydrogen.
AI's capabilities to create visual art, music, stories, and videos are improving exponentially. AI can teach innovative new strategies, unknown to humans, in games such as chess or Go and promises to revolutionize human problem-solving. These advances motivate important questions relating to AI and Human Creativity.