[hillis]

I'm not sure this is the answer, but it seems likely that you can more efficiently reflect energy back into the atmosphere than you can convert it via a solar panel and then use that energy through air conditioning to cool down the space.

Instead of having to go through the whole process of conversion from sunlight to electricity via a solar panel to cooling via an air conditioner, you can just reflect most of the energy that's heating up the building in the first place.

[aaron695]

One thing I didn't think of is, if this was really cheap to buy AND install it'd work. Solar panels and inverters are currently not economical else they be 100%ish on all roofs. If this cost little, obviously it'd be a break through.

But reading the nature article which tries to get into this I'm not convinced it's that cheap or will work better than solar panels.