This summer the heat waves are hitting us hard, so much so that July was recorded as the hottest in history, and August does not look like wanting to give us a truce.
Climate change is one of the reasons why temperatures rise, and when these arise, we use more air conditioning ( according to this report more than 1,200 million and rising) that consumes more energy and causes greater energy demand as reported by IEA.
If the energy we consume does not come from sustainable means, we are encouraging climate change to worsen and entering a vicious circle in which more heat causes more pollution that causes more heat.
That is why there are already companies looking for a solution. Think about it, what spends less energy, cooling an entire room or just one person? Technology is clear, the future of air conditioning does not pass through spaces, but through people. So with a portable mini AA, energy efficiency would improve and your carbon footprint in the world, too.
The air conditioning of the future: portable, wrist and more efficient
When you are in an office with more people there is always one that is colder than the others, another that wants to lower the air temperature and another that directly takes a jacket even if it is 40 degrees on the street. That difference was one of the reasons for the startup Embr Labs.
It was founded by three MIT Ph.D. students who lived through this situation and who kept asking why even if there was only one person in the room, the air conditioning cooled the same way. The energy expenditure was the same one, two, five or ten. Thus the question arose, how to reduce it?
The idea was to change the concept of air conditioning and focus its effectiveness on people and not on spaces. In this way, your Embr Wave device is used individually, placing it inside the wrist and thus becoming a personal device.
The key is that it cools the ceramic plate that is in contact with the skin of the wrist which favors that the thermoreceptors present in the area are relieved and the sensation of heat decreases, according to the startup. It is also like a smartwatch, and you could even say that the design is elegant and has style.
It costs $ 299 and according to Embr, it would allow people to cool down personally instead of their entire office or home, which would save between 15% and 35% of the energy involved in cooling a building, for example.
More projects of portable air conditioners
Sony is another company that is putting the batteries with this issue. In July, it launched a crowdfunding campaign in Japan to launch the Reon Pocket, a device that will be located on the back of the neck (inside a shirt) and that will provide, according to the company, instant cooling thanks to the Peltier effect that causes the semiconductor material from which it would be manufactured.
The product will go on sale in 2020 and will cost $130, although at first it will only be sold in Japan.
Another project is that of the Mobile Comfort startup, which is developing a mobile air conditioner called RoCo that uses an intelligent heat sink made of a material that can change its physical form depending on the amount of energy it has. The prototype, whose launch will not be until 2021, uses a camera to track where the person is and provide air only to her. So, when you leave the room it turns off.
Technology is already making leaps and bounds to improve the sensation of heat but decreasing the environmental impact because every step to sustainability is necessary.