Generating Power on Earth From the Coldness of Deep Space

It’s a summer night. On the rooftop of a quiet building, a set of panels cools the rooms within and keeps the lights on, removing heat and generating electricity using the coldness of the sky. That cold isn’t in the air around the building—the night is warm. Rather, the panels reach far beyond Earth’s atmosphere to tap the distant cold of deep space.

Sound crazy? Admittedly, this technology isn’t fully available just yet. But we have demonstrated that by directly using power generated by the cold universe, we can chill water to cool buildings by as much as 5 ºC during the day…