The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that cooling is the fastest-growing single source of energy use in buildings. Without massive change, the IEA projects that global energy demand for cooling will more than triple by 2050. This increase alone is about how much energy the entire U.S. uses currently uses per year.  An additional problem is that the ubiquitous  hydrofluorocarbons used for refrigeration everything (buildings, cars, trains, buses, trucks, food and medications) are much more potent greenhouse gases than CO2 when they escape their sealed systems through leakage, unwise disposal, sloppy manufacturing or lots of other occasions in the lifetime of their existence. 

For a few thousand years putting some light into the darkness required fire. For a hundred or so years it required electricity to make a filament glow. Then came the diode and heat was gone from lighting. What if cooling could evolve like this as well? 

What could follow the trajectory of cooling from placing ice blocks in a deep cellar and hoping it would somehow last through the summer, to wet reefs in windows, to swamp coolers, to freon, all utilizing the physics of evaporative cooling to make refrigerators and air conditioners first in houses then in trains and automobiles? The search is on, since the world is getting hotter and electricity is a commodity in....[READ FULL ARTICLE]