The Talks

In 2021, the City of Phoenix created the nation’s first publicly-funded municipal Office of Heat Response and Mitigation. The Office was formed in response to increasing recognition of the threats to health, quality of life, and economic vitality associated with extreme heat. In this presentation, David Hondula will share some of the motivating context for creating the office, and progress and perspectives from the Office’s first six months of existence, including a synopsis of the city’s first comprehensive heat response plan.

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Extreme heat presents a significant and complex public health challenge for Los Angeles County. An upcoming report by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Climate Change and Health Equity: Strategies for Action, highlights the inequitable health impacts of climate-driven extreme heat and offers a suite of actions to address these threats. Developed in collaboration with the County Chief Sustainability Office and the California Resilience Partnership, the report draws upon analyses from the recently-released County Climate Vulnerability Assessment. This presentation will delve into the findings of the report and next steps for government agencies and community partners.

This lighting talk will introduce materials innovation to control a broad spectrum of visible and infrared wavelength to realize for effective radiative cooling. In one application, I will discuss the personal thermal management based on this concept by inventing new type of thermal textile for both human body warming and cooling by controlling mid-infrared transparency. In another application, we invented thermal wall paper for better building thermal insulation. I will discuss the successful translation of lab innovation to markets.

Extreme temperature events are becoming more frequent, intense and longer duration. When power outages occur during heatwave events, the loss of space cooling can pose a significant health hazard to occupants. This tri-lab (PNNL/LBNL/NREL) project develops a methodology to assess the value of energy efficiency measures for improving passive survivability of occupants in residential buildings. Key findings from the project on resilient cooling will be presented. Challenges in modeling and analysis of thermal resilience of buildings will be discussed.

IEA Annex 80 supports the rapid transition to resilient low-energy and low-carbon cooling of buildings to strengthen the abilities of individuals and communities to adapt to global and local climate change, and to shocks such as heat waves and grid power failures. The presentation will introduce work by LBNL and the University of California, Berkeley within Annex 80 to (1) assess the resilient cooling potentials of cool envelope materials, advanced shading and glazing solutions, natural ventilation, and low-power fan ventilation; (2) create suites of resilient-cooling solutions customized for underserved communities in the U.S.; and (3) advance resilient-cooling policies.

In this presentation we will highlight the impacts of climate change on extreme heat in San Francisco with a focus on the intersection with public health. We will then highlight current efforts to address this increased risk with a focus on municipal collaboration, both interdepartmentally as well as across sectors. The highlighted Heat and Air Quality Resilience Project (HAQR) focuses on supporting medium to long-term interventions to mitigate current and future impacts in support of more traditional short-term efforts around these issues.

Modeling, data, and measurement tools are available to assess, mitigate, and monitor overheating, urban heat, carbon, and energy impacts to keep buildings healthy and resilient over the short and long term. Overheating standards have been used for several years in the UK. They have recently spread to Canada and now Australia. China is very active in research on overheating and other IEQ issues. In the U.S., the CHPS.net program for schools and the LEED pilot credits have addressed overheating. Liability risk is significant. We have several windows of opportunity in building, health, equity, and energy programs to prevent overheating now!

The BCCN is a new network for climate researchers at UC Berkeley and LBNL. BCCN is funded by 9 Deans, the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, the California Institute for Energy and Environment and LBNL. Our primary goals are too increase inter-disciplinary climate research, secure funding for climate work at Berkeley/LBNL, and help researchers connect with off-campus climate leaders from government, community organizations and the private sector. BCCN focuses on climate actions that can make a substantial difference in the climate emergency.

Given the large expected increase in cooling demand globally, particularly in vulnerable communities where affordability is a key concern, reducing the costs of climate friendly, efficient cooling is necessary. This lightning talk will provide an overview of the activities of the Global Cooling Efficiency Program focused on reducing the costs of highly efficient cooling equipment using low-GWP refrigerants.

Heat is increasingly brutal in California’s Central Valley, where low incomes, poor air quality, old homes, and high utility bills disadvantage many residents. The multi-disciplinary Cal-THRIVES project has developed a cooling toolkit for local and state stakeholders to increase awareness of heat-related vulnerability; identify areas that are vulnerable to extreme heat events; quantify benefits from passive, active, and outdoor measures to provide improved indoor comfort and greater safety during worst case heat waves; and enhance community cooling centers. We describe some key modeling findings and policy and program recommendations from this work.

We developed a mechanically flexible solid film that adapts its thermal emittance to different ambient temperatures at zero energy cost [https://wu.mse.berkeley.edu/publications/Tang-Science2021.pdf]. The demonstrated, tape-like, temperature-adaptive radiative coating (TARC) optimally absorbs the solar energy and automatically switches thermal emittance from 0.2 for ambient temperatures lower than 15 °C to 0.9 for temperatures above 30 °C. Simulations show it outperforms existing roof coatings for energy saving in most climates. Current efforts include scaling up the product to large areas, as well as developing a liquid, paint-like form of TARC.