We're Using Materials That Are Inexpensive and Free

Our design philosophy demands a system that scales plausibly so that the costs of constructing and maintaining our power plants can compete with those of conventional fossil fuel power plants. This means we can't use rare materials or otherwise expensive materials. In fact, the materials have to be among the most abundant in nature and industry. The primary materials choices for our concentrators—plastic film and air—are critical to making our solution economically competitive.

Plastic film, the basis of our patented concentrator design, is the only man-made material produced in enough abundance to meet our scaling needs for a collector material. All in all, 744-billion square feet of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) polyester film—which is the type of plastic we use in our design—is produced worldwide every year for packaging and other uses. This total could create enough Cool Earth concentrators to produce 6,482 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually. Each concentrator uses about two pounds of plastic.

Air is used to inflate our concentrators. We're talking regular, breathable, nothing-fancy air, provided freely by nature. Each concentrator uses about five pounds of air.

As for other materials, we take a minimalist approach in their use. For instance, we use a very small amount of aluminum to create the thin (a few micrometers thick) reflective layer for each concentrator. And how small is "very small?" The average aluminum soda can has enough material to create reflective surfaces for about 725 of our concentrators.