A Swedish company has proposed a radical method of doing away with streetlights forever. In a bizarre turn of events, the company put forward an otherworldly proposal: brighten up the Moon.
The company behind the outlandish proposal is a cosmetics company called Foreo is referring to its "Brighter Moon" proposal as a solution to the global energy crisis.
"Imagine a world where the days last longer and the nights are brighter. Imagine the impact turning off every street light would have on the global energy crisis," says Foreo. "Imagine how many tons of CO₂ emissions we could reduce every day."
Night time illumination consumes a huge amount of power every year. While night time illumination is a vital component of modern human living, it does have a rather large carbon footprint due to the massive amounts of energy it consumes.
"By increasing the reflectivity of the moon, the world can experience brighter nights and decrease the need to use electric lighting in the hours after sunset," FOREO adds.
It may seem strange how a cosmetics company would come up with a massive lunar engineering project such as this. However, Foreo is insisting that it is an "innovation company" and the Brighter Moon initiative is simply an example demonstrating the various interests of the company.
"Brighter nights could dramatically reduce global energy consumption after sunlight hours. The most immediate benefit of this would be the world shifting its reliance on using street lights at night, and in doing so, save billions of dollars spent on electricity while reducing the amount of CO₂ emissions that electricity use produces," FOREA says.
The Moon reflects light from the Sun back to Earth. The amount of sunlight reflected is referred to as albedo. However, the Moon can only reflect a small amount of the sunlight that strikes its surface. Foreo is proposing transforming certain parts of the moon's surface to increase its albedo. The company also stated that modifying even 0.1 percent of the moon's surface could result in an 80 percent boost in moonlight. The resulting increase in illumination could drastically reduce the world's total energy requirements.
Foreo says, it has already raised $52 million for the project. Company representatives that the funding will be used for research and development purposes in order to find a viable method of increasing the illumination provided by the moon. However, whether the proposal is a marketing stunt, a flight of fancy or a serious scientific proposal is still being questioned.
While Foreo seems serious about turning the Moon into a giant nightlight, scientific experts are way about the proposal saying that it is probably a marketing stunt. Over the years, there have been a few oddball geoengineering proposal brought forward by various experts. However, this is the first time that this type of project has ever been proposed in the history of geoengineering.
