Building material offers low-energy solution to maintaining temperature

The team from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) said that on hot days the material can emit up to 92 per cent of the infrared heat it contains, and on colder days the material emits seven per cent of its infrared.

“We’ve essentially figured out a low-energy way to treat a building like a person; you add a layer when you’re cold and take off a layer when you’re hot,” said Asst. Prof. Po-Chun Hsu, who led the research published in Nature Sustainability. “This kind of smart material lets us maintain the temperature in a building without huge amounts of energy.”

Some estimates suggest that buildings account for 30 per cent of global energy consumption and emit 10 per cent of all global greenhouse gas, with about half of this energy footprint attributed to heating and cooling.

“For a long time, most of us have taken our indoor temperature control for granted, without thinking about how much energy it requires,” Hsu said in a statement. “If we want a carbon-negative future, I think we have to consider diverse ways to control building temperature in a more energy-efficient way.”