A little over a year ago, WhatTheyThink published an interview with Dick Kouwenhoven and Kate Scholz, Hemlock Printers, Vancouver BC, highlighting some of their green initiatives. Hemlock has been at the forefront both driving and adopting new ways of doing business with the goal of reducing its impact and the impact of the projects it produces on the environment. As one of their green projects, Hemlock Printers installed a white roof:
"Hemlock is part of the Power Smart Program through BC Hydro. By partnering with BC Hydro, companies can qualify for rebates for improving the energy efficiency of their infrastructure, their buildings; the heating and cooling systems and the lighting systems, for example. They help with audits and identify what you can do to reduce your energy footprint. A big project was to install additional insulation and a special white coating to the roof. As a result, summer heat build up was reduced 3-4 degrees Celsius (5.4-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and we no longer need to air condition the plants. In the winter we don't need to heat the production area because of the heat from the equipment."
Now we have all the details behind the technology. Since the 1980s researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) have been studying the potential effects and benefits of reducing the "urban heat island" where cities heat up more than their rural surroundings because of their dark roofs, dark pavements, and the absence of vegetation. Hashem Akbari, Head of EETD’s Urban Heat Islands Group, Art Rosenfeld, who was Director of EETD’s Center for Building Science, and others performed research demonstrating that replacing conventional roofs with cool roofs – using solar-reflective materials or just painting them white – could reduce air conditioning energy use on average 20 to 30 percent. In the 1990s the roofing industry responded to these findings by creating a variety of cool-roof products, including paints, coatings, and elastomeric materials for commercial and industrial buildings. Municipalities, air quality districts, and states began creating incentive programs to hasten the adoption of cool roofs by the marketplace, and the U.S. Green Buildings Council qualified cool roofs as a measure that would count toward receiving a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating for an energy-efficient building. It doesn't require a new roof; a little white paint can go a long way! Learn more about it by reading the entire article here.