Passive cooling of the built environment - use of innovative reflective materials to fight heat islands and decrease cooling needs

Review of the indoor environmental quality and energy consumption studies for low income households in Europe

“…On average the use of reflective coatings in the roofs of this type of building in the selected areas will decrease their cooling load by up to 30-35%. For example a prototype low cost cool coating using lime which shows 15% increase of reflectance's compared to a standard cool coating is presented by (Santamouris et al, 2008). As shown, the coating containing calcium hydroxide (lime) had an increased solar reflectance value by 15% compared to the cool white coating.…”

High-albedo roof coatings for reducing building cooling needs

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The main characteristics of high-albedo coatings for application on buildings' roofs consist of suitable superficial optic-energy features that will keep their surface cooler when exposed to solar radiation, compared to other materials with low-albedo finishing. All these studies agree about their effect in reducing the indoor operative temperature up to 4 C and then to optimize indoor thermal comfort conditions (Akbari and Bozonnet et al, 2013;Pisello and Cotana, 2014;Santamouris et al, 2008;Santamouris and Kolokotsa, 2013). In fact, the high-albedo feature, together with high thermal emittance, characteristic of the large majority of construction materials, can preserve the roofing surface from summer overheating and prevent premature damaging phenomena due to thermal stress.

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Building Resilient Cities to Climate Change

“…Among the most known urban heat island mitigation techniques are [34]: In particular, the use of cool/reflective materials in building roofs or in pavements seems to be the more promising technology [35]. Reflective materials are characterized by a high reflectivity in the solar spectrum together with a high thermal emissivity.…”