Big boost for energy efficiency

Big boost for energy efficiency
By Sylvia Wright

Chevron Corp. has given UC Davis $2.5 million to create a permanent leadership position for the campus’s Energy Efficiency Center.

The person appointed to the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency will direct the center, which was established in 2006. The world’s first university center of excellence in energy efficiency, its primary objective is to speed the transfer of energy-saving products and services into the homes, businesses and lives of Californians.

The new Chevron gift brings the center’s funding total to more than $7.5 million. The center’s start-up funding of $1 million came from the California Clean Energy Fund, a public benefit corporation dedicated to making equity investments in clean energy companies. UC Davis matched the CalCEF grant with $1.3 million in operating and research funds, faculty time, and office and laboratory space.

Other key funders include Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., Edison International, Sempra Energy, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Goldman Sachs.

Speaking Tuesday at an event announcing the new Chevron gift, UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said: “Chevron’s endowment will ensure long-term strategic leadership for the Energy Efficiency Center. By bridging long-term research with real-world applications, the director will guide the center in its goal of commercializing groundbreaking technologies, powering economic progress and helping to conserve resources.”

The campus will conduct a national search for the person to hold the Chevron Chair, who will expand the impact of the center’s research programs through interdisciplinary collaboration, education, outreach and commercialization of technologies. He or she also will continue developing strong links with state and federal government, as well as with international programs.

“Advancing energy efficiency, which is the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant form of new energy, is critical to the challenge of meeting the world’s growing energy needs,” said John McDonald, Chevron vice president and chief technology officer.

“California has been a pacesetter in energy efficiency, so it’s fitting that one of the state’s leading universities and California’s largest company should partner on the next generation of energy efficiency.”

The endowment for the Chevron Chair complements Chevron’s ongoing support for UC Davis, which includes a $500,000 gift in 2008 for the Energy Efficiency Center and a $25 million biofuels research collaboration begun in 2006 to develop technology to convert nonfood agricultural waste into next-generation transportation fuels.

Yesterday, one of the Energy Efficiency Center’s affiliated technology centers, the California Lighting Technology Center, debuted a new lighting system for parking areas that uses about 20 percent of the energy of conventional parking lighting systems, yet provides better safety, reduces light pollution and makes less toxic waste.