Could dark roof tiles be a thing of the past in Australia and possibly the UK

 

COP26 may have been a success or failure depending on how countries act from now on, but regardless we are going to see temperatures increase either to 1.5° or 2.7°C. So perhaps we need to look at other ways of helping staying cool. In Australia a new proposal is to stop dark roofs being put on houses. This will have an enormous impact on the urban heat island effect of the cities. There are no practical reasons why dark coloured roofs should be put on new homes and if instead light roofs or used then houses will remain cooler during the summer period. This means that less air-conditioning will be needed and there will be a saving of something in the excess of 150,000 tons of carbon a year. The simple change in using light coloured roof will keep houses significantly cooler during the hot summer months. The UK has also seen much hotter summers and the trend is for this to continue. Therefore, it might be a good idea that we adopt more of the Mediterranean style roofs of going lighter roofs and this will keep our houses cooler in summer with no real detriment to anything else.



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