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Climate Change, Global Warming and Your Roof
What Causes Climate Change?
Energy Secretary Steven Chu received a lot of attention recently when he said that everyone should paint rooftops and road surfaces white. His information, backed by a January 2008 study by three respected scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, suggests that whitening all the world's roofs and roads would have the same impact as removing all of the world's cars for 11 years. While no one expects that this will actually happen, it illustrates the impact that a white roof can have on the environment. Even incremental change in this area could have a major impact over time.
Definition of Climate Change
As with most extremely large problems, a definition of climate change is not one-size fits all, and the causes and myths of climate change seem almost to vary from moment to moment. What actually causes climate change typically boils down to carbon dioxide. Too much of it in the atmosphere and heat gets trapped, raising the world's temperature over time. As with so many other things, the devil is in the details, and it's usually arguments over the details that cause so many misleading statements and confusion. All too often this confusion is deliberate, as those with a financial stake in the outcome deliberately provide misleading information or interpretations.
Our understanding, in short, is that while many natural activities such as breathing and digestion produce greenhouse gases, the sheer volume of manmade greenhouse gases has begun to overwhelm the earth's ability to process out the CO². As an example, according to the 1999 edition of Ward's Motor Vehicle Facts & Figures there are 671 million registered motor vehicles in existence in 1996 (there are doubtless far more today), up from a few tens of thousands a hundred years earlier. Assuming that most of these have good emission control systems, which most do not, then you can expect that they would emit at least 20 pounds of carbon dioxide each for every mile driven. If we take a conservative estimate of 10 miles per day, that means that over the 11 years mentioned above, this would mean that painting all the roofs white would equate to removing 269 billion tons of CO². That's 269,000,000,000 tons!
Climate change is impacting your roof, and you may not even know it. While hardly predictable on a local level, broad climate change trends seem to mean dramatic changes in overall climate in specific regions, and this can mean changes for how you protect your roof. In more cases than not, these changes seem to mean hotter, dryer conditions. This means that insulating your roof is becoming more important every day.
So What Does This Mean For Your Roof?
In the US alone, the energy savings from simply painting man-made horizontal surfaces white would amount to 1.1 trillion dollars. So if you're looking for how to save on non-renewable energy, that's a lot of savings per roof.
More importantly, the above numbers are for simply painting roofs and roads white. If you actually increase the insulation value at the same time, such as what happens when you install a polyurethane spray foam roof, the numbers become far more impressive.
How much more impressive? Let's use the Department of Energy Cool Roof Calculator to find out. If a black commercial roof in Chicago Illinois has a low R-value roof and low infrared emittance, it's costing an average of 39,960 BTU's per square foot to heat and cool over the course of a year. If it's painted white, that decreases to 36,658 BTU/ft². However, if a two inch layer of white polyurethane spray foam roof is installed with an R-value of 14 and a high infrared emittance, the energy cost drops to 14,899 BTU's per square foot. That's a little over one third of the energy expense.
Please keep in mind that these numbers are only an example using the DOE Cool Roof Calculator. Your actual results may vary.
In addition to saving you energy and helping the environment, spray foam roofs provide an Energy Star approved monolithic seal over your entire roof deck that is leak free, lightweight, weather resistant, with strong adhesion and wind uplift resistance. Polyurethane foam has a history of over 35 years as a maintainable roofing medium. Since 1987 Kohls Foam Systems has been a leading expert in spray foam roofing applications. This in-depth expertise has been recognized with national awards and the focus of many articles in industry publications.
Contact us today at 612-708-4111 and see how we can save you energy, help the environment, save you money, and install the best roof your building will ever have!
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