Technology AI, Science and New Things
Global energy demand for making spaces cooler is going to triple over the next 30 years. Thirty-seven per cent of all energy demand growth between now and the middle of the century will be accounted for by air conditioning. It's set to be an abominable climate change doom loop unless humanity can come up with vastly more efficient cooling systems and power them all with renewables. Step forward elastocaloric cooling via the hysteretic material response – for instance, with bundles of nickel-titanium wires being endlessly stressed and de-stressed on a patented drum with an asymmetric cam at one end. As the wires stretch they give out heat. As they relax they take it in. The process can be four times as efficient as the best air conditioning systems currently in use, and the number of scientific papers on the principle behind it is doubling every 22 months. It's one of ten technologies the World Economic Foundation says is going to change the world.
