“The paint reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat. Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.“

holy shit this could be a game changer

“Using this new paint formulation to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet could result in a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. … That’s more powerful than the air conditioners used by most houses.” (statement, paper)

Adding the link from Purdue itself to add to this.

Will that… warm our atmosphere, though? Like, energy can’t be created or destroyed, so SOMEthing has to happen with that solar radiation & infrared heat. Right?

Actually the opposite, to my understanding? Because the “somewhere” the radiation gets reflected can be INTO SPAAAAACE.

There’s this thing called planetary albedo, as in, “how white a planet is”, where the more a planet reflects back sunlight, the cooler it is. I learned about it because ice and snow are really good at reflecting sunlight away, so one of the worries about melting ice caps is that they’re not just the consequence of global warming, but as they disappear, they decrease Earth’s albedo, which means the planet is less good at reflecting heat, and therefore gets hotter, so it can form a whole feedback loop.

So if you can increase albedo? Good to go!