Lighting center director Michael Siminovitch at the center
Michael Siminovitch, CLTC director and professor of design

UC Davis Collaborating with Mexico on Lighting, Energy Efficiency

UC Davis and universities in Mexico will collaborate on energy-efficiency projects during the next several years. The major project between the UC Davis California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) and the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara (UAG), Jalisco, Mexico, will establish a sister lighting technology center in Guadalajara.

Other projects will include conducting economic analysis and assessment of energy efficiency in building and demonstrating energy-efficiency solutions across Mexico, according to Michael Siminovitch, CLTC director and professor of design.

"Energy officials from Mexico toured several UCs, including UC Davis and our center," he said. "They like what we are doing and it fits what they were looking for. We bonded with the people in Jalisco.

"We are good at making things happen in the real world and can hit the ground running with them. But we didn't want to just parachute in and tell them what to do. This needs to be a Mexican solution."

The UC Davis-UAG project will create an exchange opportunity for faculty and students. Siminovitch will work in Mexico one-third to one-half time; UC Davis students will go to UAG and UAG students will spend time at UC Davis. Initial funding of $2 million has been provided by UAG. Siminovitch said that the seed funding will be critical to attract additional investment for sustaining and enhancing the collaboration.

"I'm confident we should be able to raise three or four times that amount," he said.

This initiative follows the recent signing of memorandums of understanding between the Mexican states of Jalisco and Aguascalientes and the California Energy Commission, and the UC and Mexican Secretariat of Energy to work together on energy conservation and clean energy initiatives. These projects are initial investments aimed at helping Mexico meet its ambitious clean energy goals and lead the clean energy economy in Latin America.

The CLTC is a not-for-profit research and demonstration center for development and commercialization of energy-efficient lighting. It is part of the Department of Design in the College of Letters and Science.

— Jeffrey Day, content strategist in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science

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