Research that Informs Business and Public Policy
The transition to new air conditioning refrigerants will involve difficult tradeoffs. Air conditioning (AC) has transformed life in hot and humid countries including the US, Japan and Korea. Over 85 … Continue Reading Weighing Consumer Safety versus Climate Action
(Today’s post is co-authored with Susanna Berkouwer, a Ph.D. candidate at the Energy Institute.) A UC Berkeley-based engineering team thinks the answer is “yes.” Many of us are in the … Continue Reading Can Cell Phones Help Improve Electricity Reliability?
(This post is co-authored with Catherine Wolfram and Derek Wolfson, Energy Institute PhD student researcher) Microgrids are difficult to implement and can be undermined by promises of grid expansion. Nuclear … Continue Reading Are Solar Microgrids the Future in the Developing World?
Temperature loggers can help us build more energy-efficient homes. One billion (yep, 1,000,000,000) new homes will be built worldwide by 2025. How do we make homes that will stay cool … Continue Reading Big Data in a Little Package
Vietnam, a leading indicator for the rest of the developing world, has seen tremendous growth in per capita energy consumption. During a recent family vacation in Vietnam, I learned that … Continue Reading Good Morning Vietnam, Energy-wise
Recent research questions a widely held belief. (This post is co-authored with Kenneth Lee and Edward Miguel.) The head of Swedfund, the development finance group, recently summarized a widely-held belief: … Continue Reading Does Solving Energy Poverty Help Solve Poverty? Not Quite.
Most discussions about energy in the developing world quickly turn to the 1.3 billion people who don’t have access to electricity. Many initiatives are focused on serving these people, such … Continue Reading The Developing World Is Connecting to the Power Grid, but Reliability Lags
