Heating and cooling buildings consumes energy. Refrigeration, the larger consumer, accounts for about one-fifth of energy use in the United States, according to the US Energy Information Administration — and that number is expected to increase rapidly as the world warms.
Stanford professor Yi Cui wants to put a stop to this with “smart clothing” that keeps wearers cool or warm so they don’t have to turn up the thermostat or turn down the air conditioning.
His startup LifeLabs in Sunnyvale sells clothing that looks and performs like regular athletic wear, but is made from high-tech fabrics he invented to help regulate body temperature.
“We expend so much energy cooling in the summer and warming in the winter to keep people comfortable indoors,” said Cui, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. “If the air conditioning could get 3 degrees Celsius warmer in the summer, you could save about 30% of a building’s energy consumption. Every 1 degree Celsius saves 10%.”
In winter, the opposite would be true: conserve energy by turning down the thermostat when clothing could keep people warmer.
LifeLabs products include shirts, pants, shorts, windbreakers, jackets, vests, pants and pajamas, as well as bedding items such as sheets and pillowcases. For example, a short-sleeved, button-down cooling shirt costs $69 and a cooling SPF windbreaker is $129.
But for apparel to significantly reduce the energy used to heat and cool buildings, LifeLabs and similar products would need to gain widespread acceptance—by consumers and, more importantly, by corporate customers.
Imagine a factory, warehouse or school where everyone wore uniforms made from climate-controlled fabric. These huge buildings could then curb their energy consumption. “If you could get an entire factory of workers to wear it, it could have a big impact,” Cui said.
The 12-strong LifeLabs, which is backed by $13.8 million in venture capital, has sold fewer than 10,000 garments since it launched direct-to-consumer sales last fall. Cui acknowledges that it takes a lot more marketing to create awareness. It hopes to grow through partnerships with major clothing manufacturers and other commercial entities such as workplaces.
Using clothing to save energy hasn’t always been a popular concept. During the 1970s oil crisis, Pres. Jimmy Carter was greeted with derision when he urged Americans to wear sweaters so they could turn down their thermostats.
But in the decades since, attitudes have changed as the pace of global warming has accelerated. Energy experts said that any quick and cheap way to curb energy use has advantages compared to cumbersome solutions like building new buildings.
“Getting customers to make small changes in demand is a cost-effective way to reduce the need for additional network hardware, whether it’s more generation, more storage or more transmission,” wrote Severin Borenstein, professor and faculty director of the Energy Institute at Haas School of Business of UC Berkeley, in a blog post, though not specifically about apparel.
But Borenstein was skeptical of the LifeLabs concept, saying in an email that social norms rather than tech clothing needed to be changed. For example, he said: “Japan declared a Hawaiian Shirt Summer the following summer after the Fukushima disaster and associated power shortage. They set the thermostats at 82 degrees and it was considered a huge success. Likewise, sweaters/sweatshirts and thick socks are a good way to stay warm in winter.
“Bedding seems to be a more important breakthrough as there is a lot of debate about how to sleep cooler and the importance of sleeping in a cool room,” he said.
Donald Wulfinghoff, director of the Energy Institute Press, which publishes guides to saving energy, was even less enthusiastic about the concept.
“The claims of saving heating and cooling energy almost certainly fall under the ‘greenwashing’ category,” he wrote in an email.
But LifeLabs’ investors — who aren’t impartial, of course — see it as a potential game-changer.
“We firmly believe that technological advances will have a huge impact in the fight against the climate crisis by empowering individuals to reduce personal energy consumption,” said Bo Bai, founder of the Asia Green Fund, in a Explanation. In April, his company raised a $6 million round of funding for LifeLabs.
Recently, Cui wore a dark polo shirt and tan pants that don’t seem any different from typical Silicon Valley attire, both made from CooLife fabrics. “You can feel the cooling immediately,” he said, feeling his shirt.
He showed a shelf of LifeLabs items. His WarmLife clothing captures human infrared radiation with a thin porous metal coating sandwiched between regular textiles, he said. An entire jacket uses about as much aluminum as a paper clip and is about a third lighter than a down jacket, Cui said.
“If you put your hands in, you can feel the heat build up within 5 or 10 seconds; I can feel it right away,” Cui said demonstratively.
According to the company, WarmLife consists of 97% recycled material. Its nylon fiber is pre-consumer, like fabric scraps and yarn scraps, while its polyester is post-consumer, recycled from used bottles.
The CoolLife fabric is woven from polyethylene, the same material used in supermarket plastic bags. “CoolLife is now being made from a virgin thread with the goal of moving to a recycled material in the future,” the company said.
Cui said his approach is superior to other cooling fabrics that use mesh – essentially holes – to let body heat escape. “We cool before the sweat comes out,” he said. “I don’t think other cooling technologies can do that.”
The climate clothing space is so young that there are no independent studies to prove or disprove LifeLabs’ claims, and the company has been unable to identify outside experts familiar with its work.
Of course there are rivals. Companies from Sony to Under Armor sell temperature-regulating clothing, and other university labs like UC San Diego and the University of Maryland have announced breakthroughs in temperature-regulating fabrics. A quick Amazon search returns more than 4,000 matches for “temperature control clothing”. Many of these are traditional items like thermal underwear and moisture-wicking T-shirts; Some are fancier, such as B. Heated electric underwear with bluetooth control.
LifeLabs tests its clothing using special mannequins that mimic human heat generation. The dummies’ temperature sensors show that CoolTech can reduce body temperature by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, Cui said.
Next on his drawing board is a bi-functional fabric that can both heat and cool as the temperature changes throughout the day. It’s not out yet, but it already has a name: DualLife.
“Any time you have a big difference in temperature between day and night, or you get hot when you run and cooler when you stand still, that would be useful for DualLife,” Cui said.
Carolyn Said is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid