Through teaching, mentorship and research projects, ERG supports a diverse suite of basic and applied projects. The goal of this engagement is to understand, inform, and transform the knowledge and practical components of the approach to sustainability. The ERG research approach is highly interdisciplinary, and ties together work at the local to global level. Particular research efforts currently are focused on transforming and decarbonizing the local to global energy system, on the drivers of international development and the impacts on water and ecological resources, to the design and transformation of the built environment, to the biogeochemical cycles and the human impacts on them, to the role of smart systems to enable the understanding and wise use of natural and constructed systems.
Critical Ruralities Lab
Water Group
Professor Isha Ray leads the ERG Water Group as an interdisciplinary collaboration focused on the social dimensions of water. Members work on issues of equitable access and efficient, sustainable management of freshwater resources for both humans and the environment. Affordability, reliability, public health impacts and environmental sustainability of supplies are complex issues that require well-grounded local knowledge about how water is used and who decides how to use it. Fieldwork sites span the globe, including the US, Mexico, Colombia, Tanzania, Ghana, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and China.
Harte Lab: Ecology & Global Change
Environmental science is the focus of the Harte Lab. In Fall 2013 the group was comprised of 11 graduate students, a postdoctoral fellow, two visiting scholars from Europe, and Professor John Harte. Since 1979, weekly meetings have provided an ongoing forum for members and invited guests to present research in progress and receive vigorous feedback from the group.
Ecology and global change are the primary topics of research. Among the goals of Harte Lab research are: to characterize ecological feedbacks to climate change, to predict effects of global change on biodiversity, and to develop fundamental theory that predicts the structure of ecosystems across spatial scales.
In recent years, field studies have been carried out in alpine and subalpine habitats in the Colorado Rockies, the Sierra, and the Tibetan Plateau; grasslands and pine forest in Coastal California; agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa; and forested habitat in Hawaii. Two particularly prominent ongoing activities are long-term climate manipulation experiments in the Rockies and the application of information theory to the construction of a widely applicable theory of the abundance, distribution, and energetics of species in ecosystems.
The policy implications of Harte Lab research are pursued by the group as well, often via interdisciplinary collaborations with economists, and, in collaboration with UCB’s School of Journalism, the communication of scientific findings to the general public has become a recent area of emphasis for some members of the Lab.
Kueppers Lap Group
The Kueppers lab group aims to understand how forests change in structure and distribution as a consequence of climate warming and related changes in hydroclimate.
Understanding the vulnerability of forest ecosystems to climate change is critical for anticipating the potential of future forests to serve as “sinks” for anthropogenic CO2 emissions, to provide habitat for other species, and to regulate the hydrological cycle. Our novel Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment investigated how warming affects tree recruitment within and above Rocky Mountain subalpine forests. Our tropical forest research on shifts in forest functional composition with precipitation variability is part of the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments – Tropics project. In addition to field observations we also use demographic models of plant species and functional types to understand the pace and dynamics of forest change.
Energy Modeling, Analysis & Control (EMAC)
The Energy Modeling, Analysis and Control (EMAC) group addresses the engineering and techno-economic challenges to decarbonizing electric power systems. Some of the basic questions we work on are: (1) How can future power systems be made sufficiently flexible to accommodate very large penetrations of wind and solar generation? (2) How does heavily distributed renewable electricity generation impact the operation and economics of low voltage distribution systems? (3) What is the value of energy storage in large-scale power systems? (4) What energy efficiency opportunities can be identified with electricity consumption data alone?
Our work ranges from applied to theoretical. Sometimes we use third party simulation platforms; sometimes we build our own simulation tools. Much of our work focuses on building new control and optimization frameworks to facilitate the operation of low carbon grids. We are increasingly working with “big data” – especially electricity consumption data and solar production data – and building tools and algorithms to process and infer policy-relevant information.
EMAC is led by ERG assistant professor Duncan Callaway and includes undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs from a variety of backgrounds; most come from ERG but we also have members from the college of engineering. We also collaborate with researchers in the Energy and Environmental Technologies Division at LBNL. EMAC alumni have gone into either consulting or academia.
Climate & Carbon Sciences Program
The research mission of the Climate & Carbon Sciences Program is to advance the understanding and prediction of multiscale climate dynamics, abrupt and extreme climate events, terrestrial feedbacks to climate change, and their impacts on energy and water resources.
The Climate and Carbon Sciences Program Area encompasses both atmospheric and ecosystem processes, seeking to improve understanding of climate forcing, ecosystem-climate feedbacks, and ecosystem goods and services like biofuel production, carbon sequestration, and climate change adaptation. The Program Area is focused around a set of interrelated goals, and integrates a wide range of expertise and tools, to conduct fundamental science and to improve predictive climate models.
ERG Associate Adjunct Professor, Margaret Torn, leads two programs in this area: (1) Atmospheric Systems Research Program and (2) Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program. Learn more about this research here.
Go to the Climate & Carbon Sciences Program website
[Photo: Moose Winans]
Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL)
RAEL is engaged in projects to develop the science, technology, policy needs and to foster engagements that explore the future of energy, specifically the transition to a low-cabon, environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable energy system.
Climate Futures Lab
The Climate Futures Lab is a hub of social science research on the impact and equity of climate change responses at the University of California, Berkeley. The lab is led by Meg Mills-Novoa, and includes ERG students from a wide range of backgrounds.
ERG Economics Lab
The ERG Economics Lab works on the economics of a wide range of environmental, energy and resource issues. In addition to academic research, members of the lab are also active in policy outreach. The ERG Economics Lab is co-led by David Anthoff and Paige Weber . You can find more information about the ERG Economics Lab on its website at https://ergecon.berkeley.edu/about/.