Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California's leading energy industry and policy experts mingled with energy researchers and academic leaders on the UC Davis campus in mid-April to celebrate the creation of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center through a $1 million challenge grant from the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF).
"The center is the first of its kind in the nation and is destined to be a world leader in energy efficiency innovation," said UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef.
The announcement took place in a soon-to-open campus building designed and built to achieve certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. The governor toured the building before addressing the audience.
"This building is just the beginning," Schwarzenegger said. "This campus will become the academic center of the energy efficiency movement… the Energy Efficiency Center will be a lab for ideas of the future." (View
video of the governor's announcement online here)
The UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center will be unique because it focuses specifically on the technology transfer process for energy efficiency solutions and on developing the solutions in a multidisciplinary fashion, activities at which UC Davis excels. It will emphasize three energy use sectors: buildings, transportation, and agriculture and food production.
Initially, ITS-Davis will serve as the physical and administrative home of the Center until new space is identified. ITS-Davis Director Dan Sperling is associate director of the new Center, and Andrew Hargadon, an ITS-Davis affiliate and associate professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management (GSM), is the Center's founding director.
"This center will change the way we study energy efficiency, the way we teach it, and the ways in which we work together with the public and private sector to develop real and lasting innovations in energy - to get them out of the lab and into the marketplace faster," said Hargadon.
Benjamin Finkelor, a GSM graduate, has been named the Center's program manager. Over the past four years Finkelor has worked in the clean technology sector in the greater Sacramento region, having served as interim executive director for CleanStart, a regional business incubator, and as clean technology analyst for the California Public Employees' Retirement System.
In addition to its close affiliation with ITS-Davis and GSM, the Center will work very closely with the California Biomass Collaborative and the California Lighting Technology Center.
UC Davis won the grant in competition against Stanford University and UC Berkeley. The proposal was spearheaded by Joshua Cunningham, research staff member of ITS-Davis, and Dan Sperling. With leadership by Vice Chancellor of Research Barry Klein, the campus pledged $1.3 million to match the CalCEF grant in operating and research funds, faculty time, and office and laboratory space. Already, 32 faculty members from 11 departments have affiliated themselves with the new Center. UC Davis also plans to recruit 12 new faculty members in the energy field during the next several years as part of the Energy for the Future Initiative announced last fall.
In addition to the CalCEF grant and campus matching funds, PG&E Corp. pledged $500,000 over five years for academic fellowships, recruitment, and an international energy conference. CalCEF is a $30 million public benefit investment fund formed in 2005 as part of the Pacific Gas & Electric bankruptcy settlement.
