As cities face elevated summertime energy requirements and industries face rising costs to keep products and machinery cool, Pirta paint not only reflects the sun’s heat away from a surface but also allows heat to escape from within a structure.
Both government and energy industry leaders around the world are struggling to find sustainable solutions to the health and economic implications of extreme heat conditions. The United Nations expects climate change to stifle economic growth worldwide, with equatorial countries being hit the hardest. Studies have estimated that recent heat waves in Europe have cost countries as much as 0.3-0.5% of their GDP.
Fueled by a desire to address this heat crisis in a sustainable and affordable way, father and son duo Howard and Robert Atkin founded Pirta, a company dedicated to surpassing the expectations of passive cooling technology through their unique paint. Pirta paint not only exceeds the ability of currently available paints to reflect the sun’s energy away from a surface but also allows a surface to release heat to the outside.
“During lockdown, we started talking about the idea of a coating system that would be able to passively cool a building. There’s lots of examples in nature, so we knew that this was possible,” said Rob Atkin, Founder and Co-director of Research and Development for Pirta.
Starting in their garage, the Atkins created a coating system unlike any other, using the cocoon as inspiration. Their paint has been through rigorous testing at the University of Leeds and has proven the ability to lower surface temperatures by as much as 64 ℃ (114.4 ℉) compared to a black surface. It is able to reflect up to 99.82% of the sun’s energy away from the surface on which it is painted. Emissivity, or the ability of a material to release heat, is also very high — 0.998 on a scale of 0-1. The combined power of high reflectivity and high emissivity are what make this paint unique and effective. This amount of heat offset has the potential to significantly decrease reliance on cooling systems which only exacerbate the problems of climate change through their energy dependance.
“To be able to offset rising temperatures with technologies that utilise minimal energy, that is a huge win-win for the world – for humanity,” said Scott Fleming, CEO of Pirta. “It is critical for mass adoption that not only are we an order of magnitude more effective than current solutions but cost competitive as well. Our focus is to enable everyone globally with the ability to be part of the solution and cool our warming planet.”
Backed by several key players in UK innovation, such as Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, Innovate UK Edge and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), Pirta is bringing their product to market. By starting with industries that are heavily impacted by the heat crisis, such as agriculture, energy and transportation, they are poised to fill a need for companies that are on a tight deadline to deliver on climate promises.
