Monday, April 20, 2009

High-tech or Low-tech?

The article we discussed about carbon footprints raises the question of what policies and actions will be most effective in curbing fuel consumption and, therefore, carbon emissions and global warming.

Do we need innovative policy instruments? Forward-thinking (or even backward-looking) economic plans? Or will we make our way through this crisis with creative high-tech?

Many researchers suggest that, in fact, lo-tech is the way to go.
One study found that the high energy use of air-conditioning could be greatly reduced if we replaced black roofs with white or reflective one. Changing the color of a 1000-square-foot roof on an air-conditioned building could offset ten metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

2 comments:

Klinger said...

There's also technology available that alot of the alternative and solar classes have been doing, using the dark colored roofs to preheat water, or heat air for other uses.

Anonymous said...

http://www.magenn.com/ - interesting concept that may beat out windmills (if it in facts works) since it uses less metal and takes up less ground space.