According to Euronews.green, a team of researchers at Cambridge University in the UK is working on a plant-based film material that remains at low temperatures when exposed to sun rays.

The proposed material aims to solve another pretty big issue of AC units, that of power consumption, as these cooling devices use significant amounts of power.

The plant-based solution can help buildings and even vehicles to stay cool due to the fact that it has high reflectivity, which means that it sends sunlight back to where it came from. To properly reflect sunlight, these materials need to be white or silver.

Dr Qingchen Shen, member of the research team that developed the material, said that "these limited colors hinder the applications where visual appearance is a key consideration, such as for architecture, cars and clothes."

To make it more attractive to potential future consumers, they had to give it different colors, without sacrificing reflectivity performance, which is why they created different shaped and patterns within the material.

For testing, experts positioned it right under sunlight and discovered that it stayed 4.5 degrees Celsius cooler compared to the ambient air.

One square meter of the plant-based film was able to deliver 120W of cooling power, whereas most bedrooms need 80W and living rooms, around 120W.

Scientists hope that the film material will be able to have other uses, as well, in the future, such as detecting air pollution and even weather changes.