Heat Wave: Cooling Our Cities Without Air Conditioning 

I'm from Zimbabwe and I recall correcting someone when I was studying in the US who was making fun of 'mud huts', calling them primitive when in actual fact they have amazing thermal efficiency for the climate they are in. I even gave an example of Eastgate Centre in Harare, the largest shopping mall in the country constructed in the 1990s which naturally cools itself. Unfortunately, I don't think it was enough to convince them otherwise.

Indian villages often used the clay roof tiles which kept cool inside houses red clay tiles called manglore tiles

I live in India, my grandparents put few layers of limestone powder in the rooftop (it's amazing that they find this solution themselves as they have never went to school, sometimes I wonder how they're so smart). So in summer vacation I went to their house for a few days and it was freaking cool almost like 23°c when the weather was 40°c 🤯

Based in Thailand I selected a bright white steel roof as a "fly-roof" (large open space under the roof) a 5m wrap around roof to keep sun off the walls and windows. An open staircase under the fly roof to allow hot air to rise and escape "stack effect ventilation" Walls are bright white and windows are very small mounted up high under the wrap around roof. Double aerated concrete block walls with foil and foam between. Foam also under the floor and in the ceilings. I am able to power my house and EV from home solar.

I live in a house with a backyard filled with bushes and trees, while the front yard with mostly concrete. I can literally feel the difference of air and temperature. I can have a relaxing afternoon in the backyard at 12nn - 3pm without air condition even when its 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

Proud to see a bunch of Indian scientists in the forefront of this cooling edge technology!

This is all very well, great ways to cool the insides of buildings, but we also need to cool the exterior. Less roads, less concrete more nature.

This is remarkable. Cooling will be one of the biggest challenges of the world in the future. Please make more of similar content

Thats why mud huts is something many people in India and around the world , are rooting for. Sustainable, and we humans beinga a part of nature, its natural ❤💯

US streets lack trees. As do their houses. trees will greatly improve the temperature arround them.

I fully agree on the fact that we should first reduce our needs of cold air during summer with solutions as suggested in the video, but also by a better insulation. As for making our air conditionning greener we have to develop low carbon energy such as renewables and nuclear energy, change the nature of the refrigerant fluid !!

As an HVAC tech, i can see all of this makes sense, but as anything, there are disadvantages with all this, like the coolers of the market based on water, this works ok only in dry climates where evaporation is easier, and the water consumption is huge. White roofs make sense on only hot climates, you dont wanna use this in the north where they get very hot summers and very cold winters. It will help, but it wont stop air conditioning, we always want 70-75F in our houses.

Use drapes and keep them closed in the day. At night open your windows with screens. Works wonders.

I'm imagining the SkyCool film being applied onto louvres and blinds to passively cool and keep heat out of any window, especially in humid tropical regions where evaporative cooling would just not work. A lot of modern design based on European tastes or temperate climates with giant windows and skylights have been stupidly adopted by architects of equatorial places, making for unnecessary heat gain that ultimately ups the need for air-conditioning.

In Brazil, some people recycle milk packages by creating a mantle of them and putting it on the ceiling with some space between it and the roof. Idk the specifics of it but I went to a house that had that system in the bedrooms but not on the rest of the rooms and the difference in temperature was stark clear

simply adding rivers and 30-40% tree cover reduces the city temp by 10-15 degrees compared to a brick and morter city.

Better insulated walls Better insulated windows Reflective roofs Trees Evaporative cooling systems (like at that fish market) Electric cars (fossil fuel engines emit lots of heat and raise the city temperature) Raising temperatures in work places and shopping centers (which are often kept very cold for no reason)

seeing those carts getting an upgrade gives me hope in humanity

Plant more trees

Experts, researchers and engineers have to understand that earthly materials, plants, trees, ways to increase efficiency and reduce energy demands could help solving problems and not the space instruments shielding technologies could help reduce Mother Earth's temperature.

Ever seen Bucky Fuller' idea of natural cooling using cool air intakes at the bottom of any structure and hot air exhaust vents on the top. Very simple concept but very efficient.

I've lived in mud houses in India which have a g+1 kind of setting with wooden ceiling for the first floor. They don't need much cooling even during the summer.

Very informative.... hope these solutions reach the common people in India and other countries and are financially viable

Mud House Can be the Next generation house where you Cool feel . Which can be the Alternative against Cement Culture house which are part of climate change.

In my Village we used to live in mud houses. It's made up of clay, bamboo (for structural strength), cow dung and we use the leftover of Rice crop. We call it Parali. It's quite cold inside during Summers and warm during winters. Though it needs a lot of maintenance but the maintenance isn't costly.

Dude! If you install solar panels, you save energy and you else get rid of the heat. Nobody mentioned that here...Also didn't mention mud or thermocol!

remember children, if a media house has made a documentary about it the company is most likely doing something shady

Thanks for making this video. At my house in Western Australia from solar panels on the roof we generate and export five times more electricity than we consume. We have zero air conditioning and the house remains cool on 40 degree C days. As climate change increases and the environment heats up, there are lots of passive systems that can be used to further cool the house if and when needed. It is all a matter of attitude and a willingness to think and continue to learn.

we need more research on this, kudos to the community. Love you guys, you guys are doing something which is actually necessary in our society.

Here in Pakistan, the temperature reaches around 45-50 centigrade during June-July. We usually use calcium carbonate (Chuna) which reflects sunlight and results in decreasing the temperature

in my city, the energy is mainly produced by thermal power plants and in peak summer days such as now, the energy demand skyrockets because of people's need of AC's. So the authorities came up with ingenious idea to not supply power to commercial players after 7 in the evening and asked them to use generators. This increases the burden on the commercial vendors and we the common people have to pay more. Also, there is the pollution but clearly that isn't the concern for an island city which faces direct threat from climate change and increasing sea level 😅

surprised u didn't discuss old desert (iran) technology of higher and lower chiming that allows cool air in and hot air out

Spent the first 2 minutes wondering why I recognized the narrator's voice

how did they make ice in the desert? he just skipped over that part. they didnt have this fancy metal back then

Installing solar panel on roof can done the same job cheaply and also provide electricity better than applying new paint

Wow, those are really interesting solutions! I love that they use no power to work. I also love the district cooling that is happenening where cool ocean bottom water is circulated through the city just. I know Hawaii is doing a little of that as is Toronto

Would've been useful if the two technologies mentioned here were compared.

Bosch Building uses 3 stage cooling system which reduces the humidity by providing chiller water at dew points - degree .. especially plants near sea .. but office air cons can be controlled by VFD systems ..

Finally an innovation in the cooling industry. I always thought Air Conditioners are not the best product considering the energy used and waste by the system. Really looking forward to see SkyCooler technology more in India at a larger scale

Execellent, informative video! Thank you, Bloomberg.

im so glad we're re-finding these cheaper and less energy intensive solutions, but i just find it funny that for so long we just assumed our ancestors just boiled away in the heat and didnt do anything for thousands of years to try to make temperatures more bearable. maybe they knew something through sheer trial and error about building comfortable places lol

I installed a light gray roof on my house and it really helped

I always wonder as to how implementation of ancient wisdom was replaced in the first place if it works better. Is that because of re-emergence of constraints that lead to the necessity and relevance of such solutions?

The man laughing 4:52 is just so ❤❤❤❤.

Thanks.

I hope bloomberg does a series regarding the future of cooling

I was thinking of setting up some mirrors on my roof and now I saw this skycool.... Hope I can buy some now.

9:24 bless her and keep her safe. She’s beautiful ❤❤❤❤So glad tech is helping improve lives

Why couldn’t the fish market utilize its HUGE roof and make it a rooftop farm? Generate income and shade the roof from direct light?

The Madrid facility uses what’s called in the US southwest swamp coolers. Great in hot, arid climes.

This is an innovative solution! ✨🙌

Thanks to the corporate partners.

Dependency on air conditioning is not a solution. A real solution would be to incorporate nature into buildings and infrastructure, grow more tall trees so the building is in shade, grow climbing ivy plants on the walls and fences, build more passive houses with wide openings so the heat doesn't get trapped inside. Make aerogel insulation popular world wide.

Plant Trees!! August 12, 2022 The more trees who die, the less oxygen you will have, and the hotter the temperatures will be because there will not be leaf coverage to cover over the height of human habitation to reduce temperatures. You must remember that unlike trees, man-made objects, like metal boxes to cars to buildings, absorb solar energy and release it as heat into the air. It is not just the gases from combustion and the heat from hot motors (petroleum and HVAC motors), but ALSO the heat-radiating characteristic of man-made object surfaces that raise the temperature of the air. A great example of this are cars and trucks standing outside in the sunlight. How hot is the body surface? What about leaves and branches of a tree - are they hot to the touch?? Whatever solar energy man-made objects absorb, they will radiate it. That includes solar panels. THAT is what is happening right now. You will probably have to disassemble and destroy a lot of heat radiating technologies such as cars, trucks, buildings, AND the blacktop/sidewalk surfaces by deconstituting the elements and returning them to mine sites and reburying them, and put trees back in those places in order to bring temperatures down (and bring in rainfall). It is getting to where trees are treated as ornaments of beauty instead of living beings who provide numerous critical functions while alive - cooling the air at human height by providing shade, providing oxygen, and making rainfall more likely to happen through transpiration of water vapor during photosynthesis. Trees brings rainfall activity, while deserts take it away because there is NOTHING to contribute to the formation of rain clouds, bringing rain. Also, the presence of moisture and trees will narrow down the range of temperature fluctuations that happen over a 24-hour period. Essentially, entire cities act as small deserts, since there is relatively little vegetation/tree coverage. Cities are even worse than deserts in this regard ALSO because of man-made objects' heat-radiating characteristic. What can we do in the meantime? Can we grow trees to cover narrow roads and grow vines that grow leaves during spring to cover the roads overhead ahead of the summer months? Can we build vine structures over the majority of buildings for a similar reason? We have to have a way of bringing temperatures down by removing as many man-made objects from contact with the sun as possible in any way we can. It is ridiculous to see 120+ degree F temperatures. Kuwait is starting to become unliveable because of these temperatures. You'll see the Ethiopian Desert normally hit 122 degrees, and it has hit 140 degrees. Even worse is the Lut Desert in Iran, which see temperatures of nearly 160 degrees! American Meteorological Society claims a reading of about 177 degrees. There, electronics stop working very quickly, and you can only be out of the car for two minutes maximum. ACs in many cars quit working. Shoes melt. Assuming that we have started to take apart the technologies such as cars, vehicles, etc. and started planting trees and covering up buildings and roads to shield them from the sun, how then would we deal with the nature of "green energy?" The fact is, if we carry out these actions, then solar energy could become unreliable for substantial power generation because the vegetation, including trees, would then bring on more periods of rain, which would in turn impact the number of days of availability of full sunshine. It remains to be seen what would be the impact on winds by such vegetation, even if the windmills are built with propellers far above the tree tops because of the potential for the moderation of the Earth's temperature across its surface relative to today's present scenario. We may have to examine what wind conditions were like thousands of years ago through descriptions of such in ancient writings in areas that were not yet deforested. I recognize that this might not resemble the scenario in which we regreen as much of today's deforested areas as possible. This may also have an unseen impact on wind energy as a reliable source of energy. I believe the key is reducing the level of technology we have, which can reduce the impact of mining, drilling, and harvesting on the Earth, as well as remove sources of heat generation as described earlier.

That Skycool is an awesome tech!

Apart from roof coating, air conditioning systems should use induction/solar heating with adsorption based cooling for getting over all minimum energy consumption. Unfortunately, these type of AC systems are not being given adequate importance by manufacturers and policymakers.

Rome has many ancient churches that felt literally cold in July. There was no AC.

Question, what if earth is going back to its normal temp and we are finally getting out of the Ice age?

to distribute medicated camphor derivatives to zones facing persistent heatwave attacks. even under direct sunlight, exposed skin on camphor or alcoholic medicated oils does elevate the senses with relieve, at the same time detours the mind of the experiential expression of the heatwave allowing the self to resume the normal state of thinking all together.

Those thermal blankets we see them use in rescue operations That would work the same and its dirt cheap.

Thank you buddy buddy buddy

GREAT IDEAS

Very innovative .

Kal Penn has such a great voice for this.

When was this filmed? I got a cool bag in Belgium that kept fresh stuff from the market fresh

i blame it on the "architects" who care more about looks than function- with no concern of location/sighting/orientation. in much of the sunny usa you will save about 15% of your heating coolling costs by just orienting the long side of the building South. then there is placing most glass on the south side, plus adding moveable window insulation systems to every section of glass. more insulation is needed as well and shading via plants on the north, east and west sides. and more simple things like ventilation.

I've been hearing about Skycool off from many content creators for months. The technology they have is absolutely incredible and the way how it works it's just amazing

8:12- is this kolar town from karnataka state? Looks like ammavaripet

Reflecting thermal energy back into the atmosphere will only help contribute to the warming issue though...

Wow! Would love to have the skycool in Bangladesh

First you keep vehicle in shades and then you have added a roof to the cart definitely it will reduce the temperature. You need to test it when shade is not available and hot sun rays coming from an angle than vertical then efficiency of this product needs to be tested

Nice that thin film has huge potential in india but it need durablity more then 5+year to justify its cost

What is the sheet called that is being used to cool the area?

If Skycool can be used for Solar panels, it would be a knockout combination

Is skycool film available commercially in India?

I mean, that’s one way to do it but you could build earthen homes which are more efficient energetically and regulates the temperature within the home even better…

Sometimes I feel that all that heat and humidity is for the plants to grow. Since that balance is off , it's trying to fix itself but we aren't allowing it. So till it achieves that target, nature won't stop. Just because something is old (like an older technology) doesn't make it outdated or primitive. If it's survived long, it probably means it still works. Our ancestors were not dumb. Learn from those lessons. They used naturally available resources and live in harmony with nature.... Not create new problems and solutions that create even more newer problems ...

Can someone explain to me: if Skycool's foil creates energy gradient without net energy input, then how does it not violate 2nd law of thermodynamics?

I think the reason why Spain don't want anyone to put air-conditions below 27 degrees Celsius is because, they want to conserve electricity and control the climate.

Telangana state has started the cool roof policy recently

Reflecting some heat means it will still be in atmosphere . Save Soil is the only, movement which can save us from global warming. plant more trees guys

Nano Cooling. Amazing.

Nice..

Wow, when it's going to be available

I don't know why when it comes to reverse cycling units on standard homes we don't take advantage of the earth's cooling.. 6 feet down the earth is a constant 24 degrees C, why not on hot days have the outside reverse cycle unit instead of letting all that hot air go into the atmosphere, why not have it run underground through a duct line to cool down to 24 degrees first?

They should design a new cart where the distance between the roof and the base(on which vegies are kept) of the cart is very less.

Cheapest is use routing hot air through pipe underneath water pool or river then release cool air into cities

7:18 the drone is visible in the reflection.

I have travel to these places and people still live people still survive and some families you can see that sadness does not encompass their daily routine If you go to the buildings where people have to walk up many stairs to get to their house they don't leave their house very often Anyway there's nowhere to go even if they do. Very few people have jobs. Lack of transportation People live in and congested cities find it much harder to gain employment So most people create their own employment. Others just take

Presumably Skycool's foil could be deployed in a form of roof-top heat pump?

Alternative cooling techniques, although cheap relative to AC's but it will not be effective if we do not control out global warming this century.

Is not it's Reflective material working as heating for others and throwing sun light

what about the heaters in cold countries like Norway? Don't those harm the environment?

3:20 vidéo on food miles please

Solar panels and heat pumps should help this problem some. Funny how small villages do this we just need to get big cities on board.

79 adverts for a 12 minute video?

Does skykool sell in India.

Wait their is a product that will reflect heat & gives cool. Fine but what about amount of resources & CO2 emits while that product was building

Can this film be applied on Glass facade to reduce air conditioning requirements

What if we cover with solar panel