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CORNISH — Climate crises demand clever and experimental solutions.

An online presentation hosted by the Cornish Energy Committee highlighted an emerging method that deploys recycled materials as reflectors to cool global hot spots and the planet at large.

Ye Tao, founder and scientific director of the volunteer-run nonprofit organization Mirrors for Earth’s Energy Rebalancing (MEER), told more than 30 attendees about his organization’s work toward managing global temperature rise. 

“MEER designs and develops surface-based mirror arrays and solar reflectors” to help “steer Earth away from a lethal heating trajectory,” according to the organization’s website meer.org. The mirror arrays are meant to mitigate global temperature rise while people continue working to reduce fossil fuel consumption and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. They would do this by reflecting solar radiation back into space to reduce temperatures on Earth.

The Cornish Energy Committee hosted Tao as part of a series of educational talks. Cornish residents voted in 2018 to work toward 100% renewable energy for the town by 2050.

Tao’s 90-minute presentation covered the data driving the project’s creation, plans for implementation and the ongoing studies at experimental sites at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, N.H., and NHTI in Concord. 

The experiments in New Hampshire are meant to test how the designs of the reflector arrays affect soil and air temperature and moisture. They vary the densities and heights of the mirrors and study how sunlight absorption and wind affect how the mirrors work, Tao said in an email.

During the talk, attendees asked about how the mirrors might affect both flight for pilots and birds and weather patterns. They also asked about the mirrors’ materials and durability, and whether they might intrude on humans and animals. 

Regarding flight, it was determined that they do not pose any issues because they do not create a focal point of light. The site in Plymouth is right next to the municipal airport and no issues have arisen, Tao said.

Current data suggests local areas of higher solar reflection do not cause a change in regional weather patterns, Tao said, but this is not yet proven; more study is required.

Mirror designs are being developed from a combination of recycled aluminum cans and plastics and soda-lime glass. According to MEER’s website, “there is currently enough PET (the plastic that food and drink containers are made of) going into landfills to fulfill annual material requirements for our solar reflectors.”

The mirrors are engineered to last for decades in various climates and “in rain events they seem to self-clean back to 80% cleanliness.” Tao reported results from 2021 trials, but testing is still ongoing.

MEER’s mission aims at “rechanneling all the broken ends of the (human) cycle that are transformable to a more sustainable world,” Tao, who left his work at Harvard University’s Rowland Institute to found MEER, said in an interview after his talk.

The mirrors would need to cover as much as 2% of global surface area, or 20% of agricultural land to completely eliminate further warming, Tao said.

“One reason why we have focused on agriculture is because it’s already a highly engineered space that we have taken from nature for good, at least for now,” Tao told attendees Saturday.

His studies have found that the mirrors can help reduce the local temperature of the farmland and improve water retention, a major issue in some regions of the world.

Tao’s method is still in the very early stages of experimentation. Since MEER is “not interested in just making another technology to enable another giant corporation to continue with the exploitative structure of the economy,” Tao said Saturday, it is currently seeking donor funding and volunteer help to move forward. 

Tao concluded with a call for volunteer help from those with any level of building experience to build wooden mirror stand bases for the NHTI site, but other forms of help are useful as well. Potential volunteers can email community@meerreflection.com. 

More information, including interviews with Tao, is online at meer.org. Saturday’s talk titled, “How Can Mirrors Help to Cool the Planet? A Virtual Talk by Dr. Ye Tao,” is on YouTube.

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