How Do White Roofs Reduce Smog

Improved human health and comfort.
How do white roofs reduce smog. How do they work. Critics have suggested white roofs do. A cool roof transfers less heat to the building below so the building stays cooler and uses less energy for air conditioning. Pro roofing nw can have one of our mobile showrooms stop by so you can see our wide selection of malarkey roofing shingles in kirkland.
New york for instance introduced rules on white roofs into its building codes as long ago as 2012. Roofs and roads are routinely repaired and replaced and. Black roofing is also responsible for heating our waterways. Recently launched by the 3m smog reducing granules nitrogen oxides or nox using roofing shingles.
This is not just a question of painting things white. The study however did not account for how white roofs might reduce electricity use for cooling which could help lower temperatures by reducing emissions from power plants. Lawrence berkeley estimates that installing so called cool roofs and cool pavement and planting trees over 30 percent of the los angeles basin would lower the average outside temperature by five degrees which would in turn reduce smog by 10 percent. 1 2 in addition green roofs can reduce building energy use by 0 7 compared to conventional roofs reducing peak electricity demand and leading to an annual savings of 0 23 per square foot of the roof s surface.
Cool roofs can reduce air temperatures inside. 1 3 these temperature reduction and. There are many small scale initiatives in cities to make roof surfaces more reflective. Known simply as cool roofing this process is designed to reduce the solar radiation.
In 2017 more than 3 000 city rooftops were painted using both white lime and a special reflective coating. We can also evaluate your roof and provide you with a complimentary estimate on the same day. Green roof temperatures can be 30 40 f lower than those of conventional roofs and can reduce city wide ambient temperatures by up to 5 f. The study concludes by stating that the rate of smog formation increases exponentially with temperature and that making the switch to white roofing would reduce smog by 10 percent in urban areas which is the equivalent of removing three to five million cars from the roads.
In urban areas white roofs also help lower smog levels by lowering local temperatures which tend to be higher due to the large proportion of paved surfaces. Volunteers have taken white paint to nearly 7 million square feet of tar roofs in the city though that is still only about 1 percent of the potential roof area.