Cooling paint could be used on large buildings to reduce emissions

By Lucy Palin | Contributor  

Researchers have created a new type of white cooling paint that is capable of reflecting 95.5 % of sunlight and reducing ambient air conditions by 1.7C. This would cool buildings and reduce the need for air conditioning, which is an energy consuming process so would make buildings more eco-friendly.

This finding has been achieved by adding different sized particles of calcium carbonate to the paint.

┬áAccording to the World Green Building Council, the lighting, heating and cooling of buildings is responsible for around 28% of global CO2. This is because the cooling and heating of buildings is mainly powered by coal, oil and gas. Heating and cooling buildings accounts for half of the EUÔÇÖs energy consumption yet only 19% of that is generated from renewable sources. 75% is generated from fossil fuels.┬á┬á

The Committee on Climate Change found that:

ÔÇ£Direct emissions, resulting from use of fossil fuels (primarily gas) for heating, make up almost half of buildings emissions. The other half is electricity-related, resulting from lighting and the use of appliances, as well as some electric heating (especially in the commercial sector).ÔÇØ

Researchers have been trying for decades to find a way to make the cooling and heating of buildings more efficient and to rely less on fossil fuels. Until now no reflective paint developed had been able to deflect enough of the sunÔÇÖs rays to lower the temperature of buildings past ambient conditions.┬á

Solutions like this can not come too soon as Carbon Brief reported that global surface temperatures were the second warmest recorded in 2019 since records began in the late 1800ÔÇÖs.┬á

┬áOne author on the study, Professor Xiulin Ruan, from Purdue University in Indiana, explained how the adding of different size particles of calcium carbonate aided in reflecting the sunÔÇÖs rays:

┬á“Sunlight is a broad spectrum of wavelengths, we know that each particle size can only scatter one wavelength effectively, so we decided to use different particle sizes to scatter all the wavelengths. This is an important contributor eventually resulting in this very high reflectance.”

The product still has many stages of testing to undergo before it will be commercially available, but when it can be distributed it will be invaluable to industrial buildings like data centres that require large amounts of energy for cooling. 

Telecommunications equipment is unlikely to be affected as the paint contains no metallic components to interfere with electromagnetic signals.

 Many major manufactures have already shown an interest in the cooling paint suggesting when it is commercially available we can expect to see it implemented on many large buildings worldwide.