The Politics of Energy Policy in California

This talk will present results from recent Environment and Energy Transitions (ENVENT) Lab research on Californian energy politics. This work examines the politics of solar adoption, wildfires, and Public Safety Power Shut-Offs. In a first study, we use a combination of satellite imagery and voter file data to examine the political identities of US households with residential solar installations.

Energy Policy Tradeoffs

In the recent Presidential debates, it was noted that hundreds of thousands of people would be thrown out of work by a ban on fracking. What would be gained by this action? In this presentation, I will consider how much oil, gas, and coal are likely be burned in the long run. The conventional wisdom today is that even with a large expansion in production, there would be no significant pressure on supplies for more than 100 years.

Ink-Based Semiconductors: From in situ Investigation to Autonomous Experimentation

Semiconductor inks promise a new manufacturing paradigm for thin film (opto)electronics and photovoltaic materials and devices. Ink-based semiconductors include conjugated organic molecules, colloidal quantum dots and hybrid metal halide perovskites, all of which are making tremendous inroads in (opto)electronic and solar energy applications. The formation of solid-state materials is not well understood or controlled, especially in application-relevant processing conditions, which tend to be kinetically far-removed from equilibrium.

2020 Emerging Technologies Review - Day 1: Energy Efficient Cloud and Data Center Workshop

In this special year, The Institute for Energy Efficiency at UC Santa Barbara held three virtual workshops as part of the 2020 Emerging Technologies Review.

The ETR virtual workshops covered new developments in: Energy Efficient Clouds and Data Centers on October 2nd; Smart Societal Infrastructure on October 16th; and Food-Energy-Water on October 23rd. Each virtual workshop featured world class experts and leaders in that arena from industry, academia and government.

Upcycling Plastic into Useful Molecules

The current scale of plastics production and the accompanying waste disposal problems represent a largely untapped opportunity for chemical upcycling. Tandem catalytic conversion by platinum supported on γ-alumina converts various polyethylene grades in high yields to liquid alkyl aromatics in the absence of added solvent or molecular hydrogen. These molecules can be used as biodegradable detergents. Coupling exothermic hydrogenolysis with endothermic aromatization renders the overall process thermodynamically accessible despite the moderate reaction temperature.

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