https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44466214
On reading the recent article by Chris Baraniuk, ‘How trying to stay cool could make the world even hotter’ as the Operations Director of the British Blind and Shutter Association who have extensively researched solutions for cooling buildings, I am in full agreement that changes need to be made to current cooling practices.
The fact that overheating is set to become a more frequent occurrence has been proven by numerous establishments.Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013-2014 indicate that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the planet will be at least 4oc warmer than pre-industrial revolution. These statistics were in fact included in the BBC article ‘How hot could the Earth get?’ in 2015.
I agree that practices currently popular for cooling our buildings need to be changed but why when blinds and shutters are a passive solution to the problem, and they already exist, are these humble inventions not being utilised and not being championed in articles such as this one?
Unless a motor is attached to blinds, no electricity is required to run them, they are a cost effective and an easily accessible solution for even the lowest socioeconomic areas (or lightweight enough to transport if manufacture is not an option). Plus, they offer additional benefits to occupants in the form of glare reduction, a particularly relevant benefit for commercial buildings.
So, my final words. There’s no doubt overheating is a hot topic; but perhaps we should be looking at solar shading in more depth to help cool it down.
– Andrew Chalk, Operations Director at the BBSA
