Olivia Cavallaro Science 07.29.2022 03:Jul AM EDT

Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures to Invest $20 Million in Startup Blue Frontier's Sustainable Air Conditioning

Bill Gates is leading an investment round in a startup that's looking to change the air conditioning industry for good.

Global warming is heating up countries all over the world and while air conditioning is keeping people cool, it's also contributing to climate change and rising temperatures. One startup is attempting to change that, with the help of Bill Gates.

Gates' clean tech investment fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures is now leading a $20 million investment round in Blue Frontier, a South Florida based cleantech startup that is looking to revolutionize air conditioning systems and make them more environmentally-friendly and sustainable, CNBC reported. But first, how does conventional air conditioning work and why does it impact climate change?

How Traditional Air Conditioning Works

Traditional air conditioning units use a vapor compression cycle to cool the air. It also uses refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons to cool the air. However, these products are being phased out as it depletes the ozone layer.

There are several alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, but they also significantly impact global warming. Moreover, air conditioners use up a lot of energy to over-cool the air, including about 531 million tons of carbon dioxide just to cool the air and 599 million tons more to remove the humidity.

Today's air conditioners account for almost 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, scientists from the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center said in a study released in March. Researchers expect such emissions to get worse as people in countries such as India, China, and Indonesia try to deal with the increasing heat.

How Blue Frontier Wants to Change Air Conditioning to Be More Environmentally Sustainable

Blue Frontier is a cleantech startup in Florida that is led by CEO and co-founder Daniel Betts, who has served in the energy technology and advanced energy systems field since 1997. The company he co-founded has developed an air conditioning technology that offers better efficiency and less environmental impact in terms of climate change.

Blue Frontier is able to do this by using just one-third to one-fifth the amount of refrigerants present in conventional systems because of the way the machine is constructed. The result is an 85% to 87% reduction in the system's impact on global warming.

Interestingly, the technology used in Blue Frontier's air conditioning was discovered during research on methods to airborne anthrax, a bioterrorism weapon. The company's machines are based on liquid desiccants, which work to lower the level of vapor pressure than water. When humid air passes over the liquid desiccant, water gets pulled out to dehumidify the air.

Moreover, Blue Frontier's liquid desiccant can be stored inside the air conditioning machine, which is essential in storing the cooling capacity for use at a later time. Betts explained that this allows them to "consume the bulk of our energy when renewable energy is abundant and when electric grid congestion is low."

Blue Frontier has caught the attention of Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as the cleantech startup announced on Thursday that it has raised a $20 million Seris A equity investment led by Gates' investment fund, as well as 2150 Urban Tech Sustainability Fund and VoLo Earth Ventures. Blue Frontier's commercialization partnerModern Niagara, was also part of the funding round.

In a press release, Breakthrough Energy Ventures founder and managing partner Carmichael Roberts commended Blue Frontier's sustainable air conditioning, describing it as an "important" project that offers "improved flexibility" as it works in "reducing overall load and better utilizing renewable energy."