As climate change and global energy consumption manifest in rising global temperatures and heat-islands, cooling living environments has become an urgent challenge. In developed settings, air conditioning of buildings consumes energy, generates heat, and releases greenhouse gases, exacerbating cooling needs. In regions of the world such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, inadequate power infrastructure for cooling buildings has led to rising casualties during summers. Passive cooling technologies, which are sustainable alternatives or complements to active cooling methods, can address these issues. Here, we consider passive daytime radiative cooling of building envelopes and propose that white paints, which are well adapted for application on buildings and moderately good at radiative cooling, could be developed into highly efficient radiative coolers for buildings on a global scale.

Raman, Aaswath P.