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Pavements Designed to Fight Climate Change Could Increase Energy Consumption in Surrounding Building
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1281[font face=Serif][font size=5]Pavements Designed to Fight Climate Change Could Increase Energy Consumption in Surrounding Buildings[/font]
[font size=3] San Diego, Calif., Nov. 6, 2012 -- A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate.
The new paving materials are designed to lower the overall temperature of the areas where they are used—something that the study, which was focused on local solar radiation and energy consumption, was not designed to measure.
The study sounds a note of caution at a time when both federal and state legislatures have been pushing for increased use of the new highly reflective pavement materials. Assembly Bill 296, which became law in California this year, is designed to advance cool pavement practices in the state and requires the compilation of a Cool Pavement Handbook. The federal Heat Island and Smog Reduction Act of 2011, currently under consideration in Congress, would specifically require paving materials with higher solar reflectivity.
“Our findings suggested that some benefits associated with reflective pavements are tied to the environment where they’re used,” said Jan Kleissl, a professor of environmental engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. “More studies are needed to determine where these new materials would be most beneficial.”
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[font size=3] San Diego, Calif., Nov. 6, 2012 -- A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate.
The new paving materials are designed to lower the overall temperature of the areas where they are used—something that the study, which was focused on local solar radiation and energy consumption, was not designed to measure.
The study sounds a note of caution at a time when both federal and state legislatures have been pushing for increased use of the new highly reflective pavement materials. Assembly Bill 296, which became law in California this year, is designed to advance cool pavement practices in the state and requires the compilation of a Cool Pavement Handbook. The federal Heat Island and Smog Reduction Act of 2011, currently under consideration in Congress, would specifically require paving materials with higher solar reflectivity.
“Our findings suggested that some benefits associated with reflective pavements are tied to the environment where they’re used,” said Jan Kleissl, a professor of environmental engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. “More studies are needed to determine where these new materials would be most beneficial.”
…[/font][/font]
