Reducing Carbon Emissions With a Lighter Roof
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Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has been encouraging Americans to change the color of their roofs from black to a lighter shade that will reflect sunlight, is now heeding his own advice, The New York Times reports. For any new construction, roof replacements or in other scenarios where making the change would be cost-effective, Chu is encouraging the Energy Department and other government agencies to take this simple step. It isn't often we can point to an example of government officials practicing what they preach.
“Cool roofs are one of the quickest and lowest cost ways we can reduce our global carbon emissions and begin the hard work of slowing climate change,” [Chu] said in a statement.
"As climate change remedies go, whitening roofs is the proverbial low-hanging fruit, many studies show. As my colleague Felicity Barringer reported last year, lighter-colored roofs not only reduce air-conditioning bills for individual buildings but also lessen the ‘heat island’ effect, in which the ambient air of urban areas is hotter than that of surrounding regions because of a high concentration of dark, heat-absorbent surfaces like asphalt."
Moreover, slapping a white roof on top of your house costs no more than a black one, Chu told Jon Stewart during a segment on The Daily Show. And the cost and emissions savings are nothing to balk at, the Times reports. By converting 80 percent of rooftops of air-conditioned buildings in the United States, we would save $735 million each year with lower energy bills and see a reduction in emissions that would be the equivalent of 1.2 million fewer cars on the road, according to a 2009 study by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory’s Heat Island Group.
(Photo credit: Bjørn Giesenbauer; C.C. 2.0)
