Professor Steven Chu: Paint The World White To Fight Global Warming
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
The Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as US Energy Secretary wants to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so they reflect more of the Sun’s light and heat to combat global warming, he said today.
Professor Steven Chu, speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, said this simple and “completely benign” approach to “geo-engineering” could have a vast impact at low cost.
By lightening all paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to reduce carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.
Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs are painted white, while visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool coloured” paints that look normal, but which absorb much less heat than conventional dark surfaces. Roads could be lightened to a concrete colour so they do not dazzle drivers in bright sunlight.
“I think with flat-type roofs you can’t even see, yes, I think you should regulate quite frankly,” Professor Chu said. “I would be in favour of that.”
Asked whether governments should be promoting white paint as a solution to climate change, he said: “Yes, absolutely… White roofs everywhere, yes.”
Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared to about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in the number of pale surfaces would help contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said his thinking on the issue had been strongly influenced by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission who drove through tough new building commissions in the state. Since 2005, California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be painted white, and the measure is being expanded this year to mandate cool-colours on all residential and tilted roofs as well.
Dr Rosenfeld is also a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, of which Professor Chu was director until he was appointed Energy Secretary. Last year, Dr Rosenfeld and two colleagues from the laboratory, Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, calculated that changing surface colours in 100 of the world’s largest cities could save the equivalent of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide – about as much as global carbon emissions are expected to rise by over the next decade.
Professor Chu said: “There’s a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Art Rosenfeld, who’s pushing very hard for a geo-engineering we all believe will be completely benign, and that’s when you have a flat-top roof building, make it white.
“Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, made a paper on this, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly… it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years, you just take them off the road for 11 years.”
He added that while flat roofs should be white, tilted, visible surfaces could be improved using “cool-coloured” paints designed to look normal while reflecting much more infrared light. These could also be used to cut the petrol consumption of cars, by reducing their need for air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said the demands of climate change required a revolution in both energy efficiency and generation. “The industrial revolution was a revolution in the use of energy,” he said. “It offloaded from human and animal power into using fossil fuels. We have to go to a different new revolution that can severely decrease the amount of carbon emissions in the generation of energy.”
The US needs to scale up its investment in clean energy research massively, he said, citing the example of other high-technology industries that routinely spend 10 to 20 per cent of their income on research. The US spends $1 trillion on generating electricity, but “nothing like” the $100bn to $200bn on research and development that would meet that standard, he said
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Yeah thats it! excepts for the fact that we count on dark roofs and roads to help melt the snow and ice here in the north!
But hey whats a few thousand more deaths on the road each year if it helps a myth!
They don’t care how many die, they want to decrease the population anyway. I wish somewhere, somehow all these loonies would find a way to be happy without cramming their lunacy down our throats.
Collectivest crap seem’s to be in abundance while conservative common sense appears to have died a horrible death.Day after day we are barraged with answers to problems that don’t even exist.People on our side are in the corner in the fetal position screaming please don’t hurt me.Gotta go,I think my head just exploded……..
