Energy Seminar – HT25 Week 7: Harvesting energy from the Cold Universe: The missing piece in the renewables puzzle?
Professor Ioannis Papakonstantinou
- Start Tuesday 04 Mar 2025 5:00pm
- Finish Tuesday 04 Mar 2025 6:15pm
- Venue School of Geography & the Environment
- Postcode OX1 3AN
- Register for event
Summary: On a bright, warm day, the more than 1TW of installed solar power capacity worldwide works tirelessly to light up our houses, charge our cars, power our business and in general, to seamlessly support our daily lives. This remarkable achievement has been made possible by over 60 years of advancements in photovoltaics, which convert the incoming solar radiation into useful energy. However, for the Earth to maintain a stable temperature, it must dissipate heat at a rate roughly equal to the power it receives from the Sun. This natural thermoregulation process, known as radiative cooling, taps into the infinite heat capacity of the ultracold Universe to release excess heat from Earth’s surface into the outer space. Recently, scientists have recognised that this vast, outgoing heat transfer could be harnessed, offering a new renewable pathway toward sustainable energy transition. This talk will cover the fundamentals of radiative cooling, will discuss recent advances in the photonic innovations lab, and will conclude with practical applications including passively cooling our spaces and vehicles, generating electricity in the dark, co-harvesting energy from the Sun and the outer space and more.
Speaker: Ioannis is Professor of Photonics and Nanofabrication in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at UCL and leads the Photonic Innovations Lab. Before joining UCL, he worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and Sharp Laboratories of Europe. His research focuses on light-matter interactions at the micro- and nanoscale, with applications spanning radiative cooling, luminescent solar concentrators, superhydrophobicity, biomedical devices and more. Ioannis also holds a diverse portfolio of over 15 patent families in areas including optoelectronic systems, liquid crystal displays, photonic security features, biomedical devices, and radiative cooling technologies.