[Graeme]

Berkeley scientist wins award for energy work

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s a physicist, Arthur Rosenfeld worked with some of the 20th century's greatest scientific minds and had a heady role in discovering building blocks of matter with Nobelist Luis Alvarez.
Then a cartel of Arab and South American nations cut oil deliveries to the United States and Western Europe — doubling oil prices almost overnight — and Rosenfeld dropped his career in particle physics to find an answer to the energy crisis.

On Thursday, President Bush named Rosenfeld of Berkeley, who turns 80 today, as the sole 2005 recipient of the coveted Enrico Fermi Award for ferreting out the kind of huge energy savings since the 1970s that have other scientists calling him the "grandfather of energy efficiency."

The Princeton group quickly concluded that the United States could cut its energy consumption 90 percent, or half of European levels, mostly by what Rosenfeld calls "mindless" steps like adding insulation to homes.

Mills calls him a "feet-on-the-ground optimist," and Rosenfeld says with steady energy efficiency gains of 1 or 2 percent a year, two thirds of the projected growth in greenhouse gas emissions probably can be avoided.

"If you can knock off another one percent, you've solved the global warming problem," he said.