ENERGY

The Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research (CABER) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign works closely with the nine University of Illinois colleges, multiple disciplinary and professional units to provide a facilitative structure for campus outreach, teaching and research in areas related to bioenergy systems. acilitates the advancement of cross-disciplinary and cross-campus research and development, education and outreach programs that promote the greater and more efficient use of bio-renewable resources and, more specifically, support the emergence of advanced bio-fuels and chemicals. CABER focuses on sustainable bioenergy systems, including plant, microbial, downstream processing and economics and policy issues as they relate to bio-based products. CABER is home to the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory

Energy Biosciences Institute is a partnership between University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Funded by a $500 million, ten-year grant from the energy company BP, researchers at EBI are charged with using biology, the physical sciences, engineering, and environmental and social sciences to devise viable solutions to global energy challenges and reduce the impact of fossil fuels on global warming. The world’s first research institution solely dedicated to energy bioscience, EBI research is initially focused on the development of next-generation biofuels, but is also looking into various applications of biology to the energy sector.

Joint BioEnergy Institute is one of the three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Centers. This scientific partnership is led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and includes the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. JBEI’s five-year mission, which DOE has funded at $135 million, is to advance the development of the next generation of biofuels. JBEI carries out its research through four interlocking divisions: Feedstocks, Deconstruction, Fuels Synthesis, and Technologies. JBEI is co-located with the Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) in Emeryville.

California Institute for Energy and the Environment is a University of California partnership of energy agencies, utilities, building industry, non-profits, and research entities. CIEE's mission is to increase the security and sustainability of energy systems in California, to help assure continued access to reliable, affordable energy services for all Californians, to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of California's agricultural, manufacturing, and service industries, and to contribute to improving the environment, including regional air and water quality and quality of the indoor built environment, while remaining sensitive to global warming issues. CIEE is a branch of the University of California Energy Institute.

Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at University of California Berkeley, is a unique new research, development, project implementation, and community outreach facility that focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems. The laboratory's mission is to help these technologies realize their full potential to contribute to environmentally sustainable development in both industrialized and developing nations while also addressing the cultural context and range of potential social impacts of any new technology or resource management system.

The Helios effort is a solar energy initiative at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory  and University of California Berkeley. The primary goal of this effort is to develop methods to “store” solar energy in the form of renewable transportation fuel. Several approaches under investigation include the generation of biofuels from biomass, the generation of biofuels by algae, and the direct conversion of water and carbon dioxide to fuels by the use of solar energy.

The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) is the nation’s largest research program dedicated to the development of an artificial solar-fuel generation technology. Established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub, JCAP aims to find a cost-effective method to produce fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide as inputs. JCAP is led by a team from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and brings together more than 160 world-class scientists and engineers from Caltech and its lead partner, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) is a major research partnership that integrates government, academic, and industrial researchers from many disciplines to overcome critical scientific and technical barriers and create new breakthrough energy storage technology. JCESR has both Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as partner institutions.

The Center for Applied Mathematics for Energy Research Applications (CAMERA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is an integrated, cross disciplinary center aimed at inventing, developing, and delivering the fundamental new mathematics required to capitalize on experimental investigations at DOE User Facilities.  

Center for Applied Mathematics for Energy Research Applications

Facility for Low-Energy Experiments in Buildings – (FLEXLAB) is building a set of testbeds and simulation platforms for research, development, and demonstration of low energy building technologies, control systems, and building systems integration.