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Right now, 10% of all global electricity is consumed by air conditioning. By 2050, as the world gets hotter and wealthier, that figure is set to double, driven by billions of new units primarily powered by fossil fuels. It’s an environmental catch-22: the hotter it gets, the more we use the very technology that’s making it worse. But what if we could cool our buildings, and the planet, using the fundamental laws of physics and materials you can find in a supermarket?
Enter Temperate, a company pioneering a revolutionary cooling technology that is up to 20 times more efficient than standard AC, uses no chemical refrigerants, and costs a fraction to manufacture and run. The secret? It captures heat, converts it into light, and beams it directly into the cold, empty vacuum of space.
For investors, Temperate represents a rare opportunity to back a deep-tech solution with the potential for planet-scale impact, targeting the multi-trillion-dollar HVAC and data centre markets with a technology that sounds like science fiction but is already proven in a working prototype.
Listen to our conversation with Temperate on the latest episode of Angel Insights using the link below, or read on for more.
The core technology behind modern air conditioning hasn’t fundamentally changed in nearly 100 years. It’s an energy-intensive process of vapour compression that uses potent greenhouse gases as refrigerants. While heat pumps offer a more efficient alternative, they represent an incremental improvement on an old system. Charlie and his team at Temperate saw the need for a complete paradigm shift.
"There's not been much realistic innovation in that space for a long time," Charlie explains. "It's been iteration on a fundamental technology... there's a ton of opportunity for new growth and new ways of doing things, especially where we are from a climate perspective."
The market is enormous and desperate for a solution. Data centres, the backbone of our digital world, spend up to 60% of their astronomical operating costs on cooling alone. A solution that could slash that figure would be transformative.
Charlie’s journey to founding Temperate is, in his own words, "non-linear." With a master's degree in post-apocalyptic science fiction, a career that started in consulting at IBM, and a six-month cycling expedition from Venice to China along the Silk Road, he is not a typical tech founder. But it was his recent work in the space sector—helping find commercial applications for complex technologies—that gave him a unique perspective.
"A lot of what I've realised my career has been about is how do we take novel things that we're building in the world... and find a way to make them resonate with people," he says.
This path led him to the climate tech venture builder Carbon 13, where he founded Temperate to apply his big-picture thinking to one of the world's biggest climate challenges.
Temperate's technology hinges on a natural phenomenon called passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC).
"If you're standing in the sun... you're not feeling the heat of the sun, you're feeling the light of the sun that's turning into heat," Charlie clarifies. "Radiative cooling is essentially converting energy into light."
Temperate’s genius lies in doing this with incredible efficiency and control. Their panels, made from simple, cheap materials, absorb heat and re-emit it as infrared light within a very specific wavelength (the 8-13 micrometre "atmospheric window"). Light in this band isn't trapped by greenhouse gases; it passes straight through our atmosphere and escapes into space.
Crucially, Temperate has achieved two breakthroughs that have eluded others:
Low-cost manufacturing: Their panels are made from aluminium and chalk. The "secret sauce" is a special paint and a simple process. "We are modelling out, it's gonna be more than 50% cheaper to make one of our ACs compared to someone else's," says Charlie.
Directing the radiation: Unlike other PDRC technologies that can only be placed on roofs, Temperate has figured out how to direct the light. This means they can bring the technology inside a building, creating the first-ever in-room radiative cooling system. This innovation is the foundation of their patent strategy.
The story of Temperate’s first proof-of-concept is the epitome of lean startup innovation. Built in the CSO's home, the key components were chalk ordered online, some adhesive, and a roll of high-quality tinfoil from Waitrose.
It worked.
Their more advanced summer prototype achieved a four-degree cooling delta between the air intake and outtake, with an energy cost so low it’s almost unbillable—around 0.00072 kilowatt-hours.
This success has already translated into commercial traction. Temperate has a signed pilot with a large German real estate company to integrate their technology into central HVAC systems in Southern Europe, with a projected payback period of just three to four months. The next major target is data centres, where shaving even a fraction of a per cent off cooling costs is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
With a clear go-to-market strategy and a monumental decision on the horizon—whether to manufacture themselves or license the IP to global giants like LG—Temperate is poised for exponential growth.
Temperate is a reminder that the most elegant solutions are often found in nature's own principles. By thinking differently, this UK startup is not just building a better air conditioner; it’s offering a scalable, affordable, and transformative way to keep us, and our planet, cool.
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