News

We’re eagerly anticipating the upcoming SF Climate Week in April, a pivotal event for anyone passionate about addressing climate change and advancing sustainability. One of the most exciting opportunities lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and climate technology. AI holds tremendous potential to accelerate the development of innovative solutions that can tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

Bakar Labs, a startup incubator at UC Berkeley, is set to launch a climate technology incubator on west campus: Bakar Climate Labs.

Infrastructure doesn’t mean just one thing to Shilpi Kumar. 

Whether it’s personal infrastructure – the relationships between people – or the physical infrastructure of the industrial world, she’s constantly looking for ways to use it to tackle climate change.

Shockingly, only 5% of plastics are recyclable. That’s right, only a smidgen of what we put in our recycling bins is actually recycled—the vast majority goes to landfills or deteriorates into microplastics.

Two recycling-focused startups are working on changing that statistic: MacroCycle is a recycling technology that returns plastic to its “virgin-grade” form, a process it says is cheaper and uses less energy than traditional recycling. The company just announced it raised $6.5 million in seed funding from Clean Energy Ventures, Volta Circle, KDT Ventures, and Neotribe Ventures.

UC Berkeley is renowned for its commitment to environmental sustainability and its academic excellence, creating an ecosystem where groundbreaking research seamlessly merges with entrepreneurial innovation to drive real-world solutions for global challenges. In this spirit, the Berkeley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Office and Bakar Climate Labs, a new campus climate technology incubator supported by QB3, are excited to announce the launch of the Berkeley Climate Action Proof-of-Concept Program (BCAPP).

The event, held at Bakar Labs on Friday, September 6, brought together a diverse coalition of stakeholders from the UC Berkeley community, with the goals of engaging and informing Berkeley academics and partners at the Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore national laboratories; exploring strengths and resources in the community; and brainstorming which emerging technologies are most important and feasible for BCH to support.

Turner Construction Company was awarded a contract to construct the Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub funded by Addison Labs Foundation for the University of California-Berkeley in Berkeley, California. 

UC Berkeley is expected to open the Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub, which aims to be a space for entrepreneurs of climate technology, in the 2027-28 academic year.

The ClimatEnginuity Hub has been in the works for the past few years as part of the larger Berkeley Innovation Zone project, according to UC Berkeley Capital Strategies Director of Communications Kyle Gibson. Part of UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan and Campus Master Plan created in 2021 and 2022, the Innovation Zone project consists of new research facilities on the west side of campus.

From materials that can draw carbon from the air to plastics that are truly biodegradable, the University of California, Berkeley, is home to a stunning array of discoveries that are poised to improve the health of our planet and reverse the devastating effects of climate change.

Today (Thursday, May 16), the campus announced plans for a new space dedicated to translating these discoveries into impactful climate solutions.