Aaswath Raman: How we can turn the cold of outer space into a renewable resource

Climate change is quite a big and real deal, no matter what deniers say. It kinda doesn't even matter what is causing it since we have to deal with the effect of it either way.

Over last couple of years, our own flat got warmer and warmer. Last summer, the inner temperature reached 30 °C during night in our kitchen, which is facing north, just like our bedroom. The heat accumulated over couple of days during heatwave and it was unbearable. We tried venting at night (which helped in past), but it didn't really make any difference this time. So we decided to get an AC - which is essentially exchanging electricity for cold (or heat, but we rarely need to heat our flat).

I believe it is safe to say, that people living in same region as I do, and especially the same area, will need to battle heat in upcoming years. Thus more AC units will be installed and more electricity will be used. For those thinking "But wouldn't this also mean, that less electricity will be used for heating?" well, electrical heating is not that frequently used where I live and we mostly utilize natural gas or coal.

With our planet getting warmer we might be looking forward to an energy crisis, that will be caused by our demand for a cool breeze during a hot day. So is there something we could do? I mean, a human body can only take so much heat. One solution is to make cooling tech more effective in the sort run. But what if we could create new, passive ways of cooling our flats, offices that won't require electricity at all cause it utilizes coldness of outer space? You think this sounds like a sci-fi? Check out TED talk by Aaswath Raman below:

Watch entire video here

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