Mark Levine

Mark Levine

Affiliate
510-486-5238

Bio

During Mark D. Levine’s 35-year career at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), he led several groups and served as Director of the Energy (Environmental Energy Technologies) Division for ten years, 1996-2006.  The Division, with a staff of more than 400, was a world leader in research on buildings energy efficiency, indoor air quality, electrochemical batteries, and energy efficiency analysis.1

His major passion for more than three decades was analyzing and promoting energy efficiency in China.  He created the China Energy Group at LBNL in 1988, a vibrant on-going group with more than ten U.S. researchers, ten visiting researchers, and countless collaborators in China.  He and the China Energy Group brought appliance standards to China in the early nineties2 and a member of the Group (Lynn Price) was instrumental in developing new and effective energy policies to reduce industrial energy use which China adopted.2

Dr. Levine has led large-scale analyses for both the residential building energy standards and appliance efficiency standards in the United States.  He created and led a project on commercial building energy standards in five countries in South East Asia.  He has led major national and international studies, including “Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future” for the U.S. government, a similar study for the world for the World Energy Council, and an assessment of energy efficiency in developing countries for US Agency for International Development.

Dr. Levine co-authored the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.  He also served as convening lead author of the buildings chapter of the 2nd Assessment Report.

He was the founder or co-founder of three independent institutions: a non-profit working on renewable energy in the U.S.3; a Government Operated Non-Governmental Organization (GONGO) working on energy efficiency in China4; and a foundation program funding clean energy policy studies in China.5  All three have had major achievements and are active and thriving today, two to three decades after they were established.  In addition to creating the China Energy Group at LBNL, he founded the Appliance Energy Efficient project (with more than 50 staff today) that performs research in support of the standards. 

He has been a board member of nine leading organizations: four in the United States; one in China; one in Japan; a venture capital firm in CA; a university program; and a large multinational corporation (energy advisory board).6  

In 2008, he was a recipient of the prestigious Obayashi Prize, awarded by the Obayashi Foundation of Japan to one person every two years for contributions to sustainable development.  He has received four other prestigious national and international awards and one from his class at Princeton University.7  He is a distinguished expert of the California Council on Science and Technology, California’s equivalent of the National Academy of Engineering. 

Dr. Levine graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, was a Fulbright scholar in Germany, attended chemistry graduate school at Harvard, and earned a PhD from the University of California Berkeley.  He was a recipient of Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (which he declined to accept the Fulbright).

 

 1 The Division has since split into three divisions under the leadership of an Associate Lab Director.

 2 China now has standards for all major residential and commercial appliances.  In 2020, the standards saved the equivalent of the output of 5.5 Three Gorges Dam.  Industrial energy use in China produces more emissions than the entire United States.

 3 Center for Resource Solutions at the Presidio in San Francisco, CA.

 4 Beijing Energy Efficiency Center (BECon).

 5 Founded a foundation program that became a stand-alone foundation: Energy Foundation – China which has grown to an independent foundation with >$50M/year of funding.

 6 American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, Center for Clean Energy Policy, Center for Resource Solutions, Asia Society of Northern CA, Shanghai Pacific Energy Center, Asia Pacific Energy Research Center, California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF), UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, and Dow Chemical Corporation

 7 Appreciation Prize of the Japanese Institute of Architects, Public Service Award of the Federation of American Scientists, Lifetime Achievement Award from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), UNIDO/Shenzhen Blue Sky award, and the Locomotive Award from Princeton’s Class of ’66 for outstanding service to the Nation and the World (which phrase also serves as Princeton’s mission).

 

Curriculum Vitae

mlevine_9_2021.pdf

Awards

2014 Berkeley Lab Prize: Lifetime Achievement Award: Societal Impact -  September 4th 2014

Since starting his career at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1978, Mark Levine has been the key driving force behind the development of the Lab's world-class energy efficiency analysis activities. LBNL's energy analysis program was the world's first significant program focused on energy efficiency analysis with a broad scope. The program pioneered a new field of research and associated analysis methods now used around the world.

These energy efficiency research and analysis efforts have had large positive societal impacts by improving energy efficiency, reducing energy use, reducing costs paid by consumers for energy services, reducing local pollutants emitted by burning most energy resources, and mitigating emissions that cause climate change.

2009 Appreciation Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan -  June 4th 2009

For his "series of accomplishments on outstanding research works, promotion of energy projects and dissemination of energy efficiency technologies in the field of architecture for global warming protection."

Federation of American Scientists Public Service Award -  August 29th 2008

For his extraordinary contributions to energy efficiency research and his work helping China build a strong energy program.

Obayashi Prize -  January 25th 2008

For his "many years of research on the global environment and global warming," and for "impressive achievements in research related to energy-efficient construction technologies, technology for control of indoor air pollution, and clean energy technologies."

2007 Nobel Peace Prize -  October 30th 2007

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were important contributors to the research on global climate change that has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The 2007 Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to former Vice President Al Gore, Jr., "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

William Collins and Inez Fung of the Earth Sciences Division (ESD), and Mark Levine, Surabi Menon, Evan Mills, Lynn Price, Jayant Sathaye, and Ernst Worrell of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) are among current members of Berkeley Lab who were leading authors of this year's IPCC working group reports.

Publications

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