Advances on technical, policy and market aspects of cool roof technology in Europe: The Cool Roofs project

Cool roof technology is an energy efficient, financially viable and sustainable solution for mitigating heat islands and reducing building energy consumption for cooling. An EU supported project called Cool Roofs has achieved to promote this technology in the EU by the implementation of an Action Plan. The work is developed in four axes, technical, market, policy and end-users. The Action Plan is steered by the development of the European Cool Roof Council that brings together all related stakeholders. The main results of the project include the creation of the European Cool Roof Council (ECRC), five cool roof pilot studies, a database of cool roofing materials, a handbook and a toolkit to assist the better understanding of the technical aspects of the technology, a market promotion plan, a proposal for a successful strategy to overcome possible policy barriers and engage with key stakeholders who could support and accelerate the creation of an EU policy and regulatory friendly environment to cool roofs, the organization of workshops and seminars and other actions of dissemination. This paper presents the main achievements at EU level regarding the establishment of cool roofs as heat island mitigation strategy and a measure for reducing cooling loads. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.