Cool roofs – Blue roofs

Cool Blue Roofs May Be The Secret To Energy Savings – on the amount of energy savings that could be realized if more buildings had ‘cool’ roofs, roofs that reflect rather than absorb sunlight.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Heat Island Group says a national campaign could save the nation more than $15 billion with energy savings over the 20 year lifespan of an average roof. And that’s only installing new cool roofs for new and end-of-life installations (the figure doubles for retrofitting the country’s 14,000 square miles of roofing).

White roofing material accomplishes this, as do the newer ‘cool-colored’ materials that increase reflection while looking like traditional darker-colored roofing materials.  Subramanian Blue is an example of the latter.  Developed in Mas Subramanian’s materials lab at Oregon State University, it’s a brilliant blue pigment derived from manganese oxide that just happens to be remarkably stable, environment-friendly, inexpensive, and highly reflective.

For a brief overview see this post on Clean Techies.  For a bit more detail see Cool Science: Cool Roofs from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Heat Island Group (also source of image here).