Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory

Daniel M. Kammen founded the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) in 1998 as a unique research, development, project implementation, and community outreach facility based at the University of California, Berkeley in the Energy and Resources Group, the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and the Goldman School of Public Policy. 

RAEL focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems. The laboratory's mission is to help users (from household to community to state, national and global levels) leverage these technologies so that energy systems can realize their full potential to contribute to environmentally sustainable development.  We explore basic materials science, policy, and gender/racial and social, justice issues in both industrialized and developing nations.  The evolving demands of low-carbon energy systems (new materials, new policy tools, the integration of clean energy technologies with incumbent technologies) and social innovations (the Just Energy Transition, the food-energy-water-materials nexus, etc. ...) are all drivers of new tools that we works in RAEL to develop and deploy. 

RAEL has research teams and programs engaged around the:

• Development of tools to design, plan,and manage low-carbon, reliable energy systems.  This team has authored the 'SWITCH' (or, loosely: Solar, wind integrated with conventional generation technologies) energy system 'smart grid', and capacity expansion modules for western North America, China, Mexico, East Africa, and other nations and regions.
• Carbon and resource footprint and behavioral assessment tools ("coolclimate.berkeley.edu)
• Design tools to evaluate mini- and micro-grid energy systems for rural areas, under-served urban communities, and islands
• The materials (and human rights) drivers of the 'Just' Energy Transition.