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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the cool-idea dept.

Richard Branson (who asked for UK taxpayer money to repair his private island after hurricane Irma) Has set a climate change challenge:

As the world continues to warm, you can expect more and more folks to be turning to air conditioners to keep their living environments cool and comfortable. And in that sense, this energy-intensive technology will do plenty to exacerbate the very problem it is designed to solve. The Global Cooling Prize is a competition to help stop runaway climate change, by dangling US$3 million in prize money for the development of more energy-efficient cooling solutions.

The Global Cooling Prize is backed by the Indian government among other partners, with Richard Branson taking on the ambassadorial duties.

$3M could keep this site running for some time -- go team SoylentNews!


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:35PM (#769636)

    People do. Typically with ground source heat pumps. The heat pump is essentially just a loop with a water heater in it. The HVAC water heater is slaved to the tap water heater using solanoid valves. There are other ways. Buildings with their own power plants (hospitals for example) sometimes use fancy heat exchanger setups.

    The simplest solution of all is to VAT light colored and dark colored roofing material at different rates. People who are willing to pay the extra dough offset the state treasury with their vanity, and everybody else pays less tax and gets lower energy bills. 600M people times a reduction of 1-3% on summer cooling Kwh, is quite a reduction, and all it takes is the stroke of a pen.

    Another really simple solution is to require HOA's to offer square-foot-minimum reductions for high efficiency construction. McMansions are the dumbest fucking thing when it comes to energy use, and they are financial anchors when energy prices rise. A high efficiency home is more expensive to build, but recovers those costs quickly. So it makes sense to build smaller more efficient homes. But since HOA's are governed by morons, they want BIG houses, because they think BIG houses make property prices rise. When fuel costs double, they are going to be pissed when there are 50 Mexicans living in that BIG house they wanted next door, because there will be no middle class families willing to pay that rediculous energy overhead.

    Again, all that solution takes is a pen. It isn't about the engineering. We know how to build efficient houses. It is about the market incentivizing wasteful design and implementation.

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