NYC's CoolRoofs Initiative Gets a Boost During Climate Week
<p>As sustainability experts, dignitaries and statesmen filed into high-level discussions about battling climate change, some of them private, Climate Week NYºC 2010 also featured activities that entailed grassroots involvement.</p> <p> </p>
As sustainability experts, dignitaries and statesmen filed into high-level discussions about battling climate change, some of them private, Climate Week NYºC 2010 also featured activities that entailed grassroots involvement.
Actually rooftop involvement is more accurate.
The NYCº CoolRoofs program invited Climate Week supporters to join the volunteers who are coating city rooftops with a light-colored, specialized substance that will help:
- Reduce the urban heat island effect created in densely populate areas with numerous dark surfaces, such as traditional roofs and paved lots.
- Make the building coated with material cooler, because the substance enables the roof to reflect heat.
- Prevent the structure from giving off all its absorb heat.
Accompanied by former Vice President Al Gore, who helped daub a toof, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched NYCº CoolRoofs last fall as part of the PlaNYC initiative to cut city greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
The CoolRoofs program is closing in on its self-imposed deadline to coat 1 million square feet of roofs by next month. As of early today, the program had covered 778,775 square feet of roofs with cool coatings.
More information on program, including details on volunteer and how to provide other support, is available at www.nyc.gov/html/coolroofs/html/home/home.shtml.
Articles, analyses and resource material about Climate Week NYºC are available at www.greenbiz.com/topic/climate-week-nyc-2010. For more information and event developments, visit www.climateweeknyc.org and Twitter @ClimateWeekNYC.
Image courtesy of NYCº CoolRoofs.
