A giant net zero glasshouse: The Reengineer Monitor #33
Yoghurt-smeared windows, mud homes - and more!
Heating and cooling
It’s perhaps the most bizarre method of coping with a heatwave that I’ve ever heard of – but if you’ve got plenty of yoghurt lying around, you might want to try it. Smearing yoghurt on your windows, to form a light-reflecting and -diffusing film, can lower indoor temperatures by around 3.5C, a university researcher says. The idea came from Tom Greenhill, an engineer who publishes a website called Heatwave Toolkit.
There are huge opportunities to electrify industrial heat in Europe, according to a new report from Regulatory Assistance Project, a think tank. “Combining electrified heat generation with storage allows for flexible use of electricity while delivering a continuous supply of heat,” the authors say, describing electro-thermal energy storage technology.
In case you missed it, for BBC News, I visited Octopus Energy’s heat pump factory in Northern Ireland in order to watch heat pumps being made. It was a fascinating tour. Stay tuned for more on this soon…
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