Tennessee State University received Department of Energy funding to establish an academy focused on preparing students and professionals to work in an emerging field: clean energy systems. PNNL is helping with that effort and others.

Researchers from PNNL have been assessing installation and use of electric heat pumps in an Alaskan community that relies on fuel oil for heat. The resulting information could advance electrification in cold rural areas across the nation.

The 98th ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium will be co-organized by Shuai Zhang and Jim De Yoreo.

PNNL helps deliver efficiency-related rules and requirements that steadily improve performance of America’s buildings, saving energy and costs and reducing carbon emissions.

Mandy Mahoney, director of the DOE Building Technologies Office, visited PNNL in late November. One key agenda item involved meeting with staff for a discussion of effective equity and justice integration in buildings-related research.

More than a dozen PNNL scientists have been named among the world’s most influential researchers on Clarivate’s 2023 Highly Cited Researchers List.

A larger HVAC workforce with training on modern heat pump technology will be pivotal to achieving the mass-scale electrification of household HVAC systems needed to meet building decarbonization goals.

Leaders from the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy visited PNNL October 19–20 for a firsthand look at capabilities and research progress.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Launch Point CDC, Inc. are developing a framework to empower disadvantaged communities with clean energy technology—along with a set of resources to give other community organizations a head start.

PNNL’s Andrea Mengual co-chaired a working group that produced Building Performance Standards: A Technical Resource Guide. PNNL’s Kim Cheslak, Bing Liu, and Jian Zhang contributed to the effort.

PNNL is at the midpoint of a study focused on the installation of electric heat pump water heaters in New Orleans homes. The efficient water heaters offer a unique capability that could help speed the transition from fossil fuels.

The results of this study are consistent with the idea that the stress of chronic salinity exposure changes tree leaf shape and function, weakening their physiology and setting in motion processes that lead to death.

Through collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security Soft Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality Center of Excellence, PNNL is advancing research and development of tools and methodologies to protect crowded places.

PNNL’s extensive portfolio of buildings-grid research included three projects that helped answer some of the technical questions related to leveraging energy consumption in buildings to enhance grid operations.

PNNL’s ARENA test bed analyzes how electrical cables degrade in extreme environments and how nondestructive examination inspection technologies can detect and locate damage.

By mimicking nature, scientists make a breakthrough in breaking down wood.

The Northwest Connected Communities Summit brought together representatives of five Department of Energy-funded Connected Communities Projects to share ideas and discuss potential collaboration opportunities.

Staff at PNNL recently completed a report highlighting commercial products enabled through projects funded by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office.

Scientists used a new analysis approach—coupled laser ablation sampling and capillary absorption spectroscopy—to gather more information on how the rhizosphere processes carbon.

The Simple Building Calculator, developed at PNNL, meets a need for a quick, interactive, and economic method to evaluate energy use—and potential savings from efficiency measures—in simple commercial buildings.