Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory

The Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) is a unique new research, development, project implementation, and community outreach facility based at the University of California, Berkeley in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. RAEL focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems. The laboratory's mission is to help these technologies realize their full potential to contribute to environmentally sustainable development in both industrialized and developing nations while also addressing the cultural context and range of potential social impacts of any new technology or resource management system. The work in RAEL is guided by the principles of use-inspired basic research, interdisciplinary approaches to the needs that energy services can provide, and a dedication to understanding and addressing the opportunities and risks in the implementation of novel energy generation and management programs. At one level, the goal for RAEL is to update, integrate and nurture a collaborative synthesis of E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful appropriate technology and development philosophy with the energy industry as it exists today. On another level, it is to promote sustainable development that includes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption.