Is White the New Green? New Study from Climatic Change.

April 7th, 2009 — Consumer Roof Info, Green Roofs, Roofing Contractor Info

The idea of cool roofs and cool pavement bouncing more of the sun’s heat back into space has been around for years. It has long been known that white roofs in Greece and Spain keep buildings cooler –and help counteract against the urban heat island effect.

Until now, nobody has tried to quantify how much atmospheric cooling could be achieved. In 2004, three California energy experts started to run the numbers. At first they could not believe their eyes — they re-checked them and ran them in different ways with unambiguous results.

Roof albedo and global warming

Every 100 square feet of roof area turned from a dark color to white is equivalent to offsetting the emission of one ton of heat-trapping, atmospheric CO2.

The study in the Climatic Change journal makes a convincing case. Scientists claim that painting urban surfaces in warm parts of the world white or a light color could offset the carbon emissions of all 600 million of the world’s cars for 18 to 20 years — at a savings equivalent to at least $1 trillion worth of CO2 reductions.

Some would like to see $3 billion of the economic stimulus package directed toward painting white or a light color as many of the nation’s roofs, and as much of its pavement, as possible — all with the goal of directing more solar radiation into space.

It must be emphasized that this plan would offset, not eliminate, the necessity of reducing carbon emissions. But as singular greenhouse mitigation strategies go — the study suggests that this strategy is elegant, simple and profoundly cheap. Not to mention job creation.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 10:35 am and is filed under Consumer Roof Info, Green Roofs, Roofing Contractor Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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2 Comments so far

  1. Duane Craig on April 23, 2009 8:30 pm

    I can attest to this. My light colored metal roof makes a huge difference in the amount of heat buildup in the house. I just wish they made these things so you could flip a switch and change the color. That way in the winter I switch it over to black so it would collect the heat. BTW nice, informative blog.

  2. Roof Info Staff on April 24, 2009 7:10 am

    Duane – Maybe in the future there will be a material that would change colors based on temperature or some form of solar radiation measurement.

    And thanks for the complement. We enjoy your blog as well.

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