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Cool Roof Rating Council Fact Sheets (2023)

U.S. Department of Energy's brochure on cool roofs; describing the science behind cool roofs, how to purchase cool roof materials, and the benefits of cool roofs. (2pp, 1.3MB)

GCCA Cool Roofs and Pavements Toolkit (2012)

The Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA) has launched a Cool Roofs and Pavements Toolkit to help cities, regions, organizations, and building owners develop and deploy successful cool surface initiatives.  The Toolkit is an on-line resource that GCCA will build up over time with targeted tools for a range of audiences. It is being launched with the publication of a primer and implementation guide, which are designed to be helpful to cool surface novices and experienced cool program managers alike.

DOE Guidelines for Selecting Cool Roofs (2010)

The U.S. DOE's Guide to understanding and selecting the cool roof that is right for your home or building. (23pp, 0.8MB)

EPA's Reducing Urban Heat Islands: Compendium of Strategies (2008)

Reducing Urban Heat Islands: Compendium of Strategies (October 2008) describes the causes and impacts of summertime urban heat islands and promotes strategies for lowering temperatures in U.S. communities. It provides an overview of heat islands, how they form, and their impacts, and describes key urban heat island reduction strategies in depth. It also describes voluntary and policy efforts undertaken by state and local governments to mitigate urban heat islands.

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IEA Annex 80 State-of-the-Art Review Section 4.2: Cool Envelope Materials

This pre-print forms part of the International Energy Agency Annex 80 (Resilient Cooling of Buildings) official report “State-of-the-Art Review”, due to be published in full in 2021.

Please cite as:

Kolokotroni, M., Levinson, R., Mahdavi, A., Salvati, A., Teufl, H., & Zinzi, M. (2021). Section 4.2: Cool Envelope Materials. Preprint of content to be published in the International Energy Agency Annex 80 (Resilient Cooling of Buildings) State-of-the-Art Review in 2021. https://heatisland.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/Annex_80_SOTAR_Section_4-...

Cool Roof Q&A

An informational cool roof primer from the Heat Island Group. (14pp, 0.2MB)

Cool Roof Rating Council's Rated Products Directory

The Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC) is an independent non-profit organization that maintains a third-party rating system for radiative properties of roof surfacing materials in their Rated Products Directory.

Cool Roof Rating Council’s Wall Products Directory

Cool Roof Rating Council’s Wall Products Directory

Cool Surface Calculators
DOE Roof Calculator

The DOE Cool Roof Calculator was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Version 1.2). This version of the calculator is for small and medium-sized facilities that purchase electricity without a demand charge based on peak monthly load. If you have a large facility that purchases electricity with a demand charge, run the CoolCalcPeak version in order to include the savings in peak demand charges from using solar radiation control

Roof Savings Calculator (RSC)

The Roof Savings Calculator was developed as an industry-consensus roof savings calculator for commercial and residential buildings using whole-building energy simulations. It is built upon the DOE-2.1E engine for fast energy simulation and integrates AtticSim for advanced modeling of modern attic and cool roofing technologies. An annual simulation of hour-by-hour performance is calculated for the building properties provided based on weather data for the selected location. Annual energy savings reported are based upon heating and cooling loads and thus this calculator is only relevant to buildings with a heating and/or cooling unit.

SRI Calculator

One way to measure how "cool" a roof can be is by calculating its Solar Reflectance Index (SRI). This index is calculated following ASTM Standard E1980-11 using a roof product's solar reflectance and thermal emittance values. The SRI calculation can also be used to estimate the surface temperature of the roof product under prescribed conditions. High SRI values indicate "cooler" roofing products. To calculate SRI, download the SRI Calculator and enter the solar reflectance value (R) and the thermal emittance value (E) as decimals, then click on "Update SRI". Note: macros must be enabled in Excel.

Cool Material Databases
LBNL Pigment Database

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pigment Database describes the solar spectral radiative properties of conventional and cool pigmented coatings.

Car Shell Reflectance Database

This Microsoft Access database file contains specifications of a multitude of car shell products from various manufacturers around the world. 

Cool Roofing Materials Database
Roof Reflectance Maps
Interactive Roof Reflectance Map

An interactive and comparative map of roof reflectance for 5 California cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Bakersfield and Long Beach). This was completed as part of a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) for the California Air Resources Board.

Read more about the map here. 

GOOGLE RESOURCE

Pending 

International Conferences on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Islands

The International Conferences on Countermeasures to Urban Heat Islands (ICCUHI) are devoted to the science, engineering and public policies to help relieve the excess heat and air pollution of Summers in hot cities. It has long been recognized that the excessive heat and smog in many cities in the Summer, the "Urban Heat Island", is partly due to the choices of building materials, vegetation and urban design.

PAST CONFERENCES

1st ICCUHI, Tokyo, Japan, August 3-4, 2006

2nd ICCUHI, Berkeley, California, September 21-23, 2009

3rd ICCUHI, Venice, Italy, October 13-15, 2014

4th ICCUHI, Singapore, May 30 - June 1, 2016