Radiative cooling: arising from practice and in turn serving practice

Radiative cooling, as a renewable cooling technology, is expected to mitigate growing global warming. However, the barrier when promoting radiative cooling from the laboratory to practice is still a blind spot and needs to be discussed right now. Here, on the basis of review for brief history, we propose a developing thread that the studies on radiative cooling arise from practice and in turn serves practice at the end. This perspective orderly elaborates fundamental limit in theory, realization of spectral-selective materials, practice on criteria for cooling performance, challenges and corresponding possible solutions in practice, and focusing on serving practice. We hope that the criticism for our own opinion could trigger researchers to deeply consider how to make achievement of radiative cooling better serving practice in the future.