Secretary Chu at the US Dept of Energy is a champion of painting roofs on buildings in hot climates white in order to reflect heat and thus save energy used for air conditioning.

Many regions, of course, experience both hot and cold weather throughout the year, so how about coming up with a heat sensitive paint that turns dark in cold weather, thus absorbing heat, and light in hot weather, reflecting heat back up into the atmosphere? We already have heat sensitive plastics that change color based on heat, but so far the application seems to be mostly for fun products, eg t-shirts, kettles etc. Could we modify and apply these technologies towards saving energy? Heat sensitive paints could have application in any enclosed area where we hang out, such as buildings and vehicles, helping to heat them up when it's cold and cool them down when it's hot.

And what about glass? Can't we come up with a heat sensitive glass for application in windows of buildings and cars that reflects heat when it's hot and absorbs heat when it's cold? We already have a technology used for placing large ads in the windows of buses. Maybe this could be combined with a heat sensitive plastic or paint and used in our vehicle fleet to reflect or absorb heat?

Seems like we might already have some of the technology, so why not deploy it to do some good while saving money!

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