It now seems that the traditional image of a mediterranean village, with its whitewashed walls, was much more beneficial to the planet than we had thought, according to an article published in The Times.

At the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, 1997’s Physics Nobel Prize winner, and current Secretary of Energy in the United States, Steven Chu, said a much more effective policy against climate change than we might think at first sight would be to paint the surface of buildings, rooftops and roads white or, at least, in light colors.

If buildings were to reflect more solar light, and therefore absorb less radiation, there would be less warming.

In fact, Chu guarantees that, should this measure be adopted globally, the reduction in CO2 emissions would be equivalent to a global prohibition on cars for eleven years.

As an example, Chu mentioned the work of Art Rosenfeld, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, in California (of which Chu is a former director), and currently a member of the California Energy Commission, whose work has made this initiative be taken into account in the urbanism laws of said State.

According to estimates made by Rosenfeld and other scientists at the lab, if the world’s 100 largest cities were to put this simple idea into practice, we would avoid warming equivalent to 44 trillion tons of carbon dioxide.

In fact, light-colored surfaces reflect approximately 80% of radiation, while dark surfaces reflect only 20%, meaning they absorb large quantities of radiation. One of the advantages of this measure is an important reduction in the use of air conditioning in buildings with light-colored walls and roofs.

This entry was posted on Friday, 26 de June de 2009 at 12:58 am and is filed under Ideas. You can track comments on this feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site.