Energy

Using solar thermal energy to power an air conditioning unit can be difficult and expensive. But a team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, have added a game-changing advance to the process that could make it much simpler, less costly and more effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thl53DGexFk

UC Merced graduate student Brandi McKuin recently returned from a trip to India, where she spent time studying the energy needs of rural villages that have been told by their government that they’ll never get electricity.

Now in its second year, UC Merced's student-run Earth Week celebration is growing and evolving.

Organized by junior Diana Franklin — the Associated Students of UC Merced's Commissioner of Sustainability — the five-day fete will begin with a kickoff event on April 18 and culminate on Earth Day, April 22.

There is no factor in a building that uses up more energy at a greater cost than heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). Yet HVAC systems do not take advantage of technology that could make them much more efficient, according to a UC Merced engineering professor.

Researchers at the University of California, Merced, have devoted years of hard work to finding solutions to some of the world's most challenging problems.

The campus' Office of Research has released a publication that showcases many of those solutions, from technologies that increase the efficiency of solar energy collectors to medical developments that could limit the reproduction of the hepatitis C virus or the spread of HIV to materials that could improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

A cap-and-trade system is more likely than a carbon tax system to trigger the adoption of clean energy technologies, according to a study by Professor Yihsu Chen at the University of California, Merced.

The study — coauthored by Chung-Li Tseng of the University of New South Wales in Australia and published this month in The Energy Journal, a quarterly journal of the International Association for Energy Economics — also found that the volatile pricing of a cap-and-trade system could lead to earlier adoption of clean technology by firms looking to hedge against carbon cost risks.

The University of California, Merced, will become the new headquarters of Engineers for a Sustainable World effective July 1, the university announced today.

Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) is a fast-growing, global nonprofit network of about 4,000 students, faculty and professionals dedicated to building a sustainable world for current and future generations by way of collaborative, interdisciplinary engineering projects.

Dozens of students at the University of California, Merced, will be able to research new ways of increasing energy efficiency and protecting our environmental resources thanks to a $250,000 gift to the campus from Southern California Edison (SCE).

The University of California, Merced, will receive $600,000 in technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Commercial Building Partnerships program, which is designed to accelerate the deployment of cost-effective, energy-saving measures in commercial buildings across the country.