Electricity usage is such a widespread issue and and one of the biggest power sinks is air conditioning. Whether you’re warming or cooling your home, or your entire office building, the numbers add up. Two designers from Paris however, seem to have come up with a way to help us rely less on AC.

Enter the “Zero Energy Table”, it may look like a normal table, but underneath is a slew of materials that turn the table into a “thermal sponge”. When the room goes above 21 degrees, the material softens to absorb heat. If the temperature drops below the threshold, the material will harden again. The heat that was absorbed is dispersed around the room using the wavy aluminium along the bottom.

The duo behind the table is designer Jean-Sébastien Lagrange and architect and engineer Raphaël Ménard. They claim that in a conference room of 15 people the table is able to reduce up to 30% of air conditioning usage.

There are drawbacks of course: if the temperature never goes above 21 degrees, the table goes back to just being a table. And if it’s extremely hot, the table won’t cool anything down. It’s just a prototype for now, but the team want to release a line of industrial furniture that is designed around saving electricity. They have also mentioned designing a lighting system that can store the heat generated from bulbs.