Energy, Climate & Environment News

As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, researchers warn that ongoing economic fallout may fuel a new wave of land acquisitions across the globe. 

Climate change isn’t the only threat facing California’s birds. Urban sprawl and agricultural development are forcing many native species to adapt to new and unfamiliar habitats.

Biochemists led by Michael Marletta, professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology, discovered that the fungus secretes an enzyme that punches holes in the tough outer layer of rice leaves

Researcher Isaac Lichter-Marck is the first to provide evidence to resolve a long-standing evolutionary debate: Did iconic desert plants adapt to arid conditions only after they invaded deserts? Or did they come preadapted to the stresses of desert living?

University of California, Berkeley, chemists have taken a big step toward making ammonia production more environmentally friendly.

A new study connecting extreme thunderstorms and tree deaths suggests the tropics will see more major blowdown events in a warming world.

The 1972 Clean Air Act has driven spectacular decreases in pollution from U.S. passenger vehicles but poses a challenge for pollution policy in poor communities, according to the first comprehensive study of air pollution exhaust standards.

Computer simulations show that a driver of annual weather cycles has gone unrecognized: the changing distance between Earth and the sun.

New research on the Cyprinodon diabolis documents the extreme effect that these harsh conditions have had on its genetic diversity.

Trees in the West provide ecosystem services for the Pacific fisher, whose population in the southern Sierra Nevada population is endangered.

Visitors to Yosemite Valley gape in awe at El Capitan and the Half Dome, aware, perhaps vaguely, that rain and glaciers took a long time to sculpt the landscape.

Oil and gas prices skyrocketed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022, creating a global energy crisis similar to the oil crisis of the 1970s. While some countries used the price shock to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal, others have responded by expanding the production of fossil fuels.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a pronounced role of California’s recent droughts in driving the transmission of Valley fever in the state.

New analysis led by researchers from Rausser College of Natural Resources and the University of Cambridge offers insight into the trajectory of energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) that may help policymakers recalibrate their strategy to drive innovation. Published September 12 in the journal Nature Energy, the findings show that participating in Mission Innovation, a new form of international cooperation, and intensifying technology competition from China are the strongest drivers of funding for new clean energy RD&D.

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit Resources for the Future (RFF) estimates that the social cost of carbon — a key metric for evaluating the future cost of climate change — is more than three times the value currently used by the U.S. federal government.

Solar panels, also known as photovoltaics, rely on semiconductor devices, or solar cells, to convert energy from the sun into electricity. Manufacturers typically dope the solar cell with chemicals so that one layer of the device bears a positive charge and another layer a negative charge. But chemical doping and layered synthesis also add extra costly steps in solar cell manufacturing.