depends on its area, orientation, location, and albedo (meaning “reflectiveness, expressed as a fraction of the light it gets” – I’m basically posting this because it’s an opportunity to use this word)
Your posting that, and having people reply “yah-huh!” (or, as they say in German, “doch!”) reminds me of the time I met somebody who does high-end heating / ventilation / air conditioning and thinking I was clever to say that my home system knows when to turn on the heat or the AC but there are times when it’s should have the smarts and the hardware to exchange air with the outside when that’s the best move, and he said that high-end systems do.
I heard one of the scientists on the radio, they were talking about using this ‘paint’ as a geoengiineering tool. Loading a plane with a huge tank of this pigment and spraying it into the sky so we can continue polluting like crazy without global warming.
That’s pretty interesting, i hadn’t given the roof color (white vs dark) too much thought. I think there might be some usefulness in keeping a roof dark as a way to heat air and/or water without electricity (or reduced use of electricity). I suppose someone must’ve looked at which is better or worse for the environment when it comes to keeping a roof white vs dark there are downsides to both but one must be worse.
came here to post this, but you beat me to it. now i wanna see the perfect grey made by mixing them! (or will it just crack open the space/time continuum??)
I guess I object to their phrasing/math, which is pretty standard for science-by-press-release.
Regular home owners, at least where I live (central texas) are not told their paint their rooves white or even get light colored shingles.
Anyway, either
a) it’s not common to paint rooves white, in which case, a better white paint is probably still not an interesting proposition
b) it IS common to paint rooves white in which case, you have to tell me how much this paint saves over whatever other paint is on offer, not how much it saves over not painting it
and I guess as the comments have said c) overall maybe it’s not such a good idea anyway
Not that Steven Chu came up with the idea. Tropical and subtropical human settlements have been panting and building with high albedo colors since time immemorial, long before anyone heard of heat pumps.
There’s also this fun snippet from the appendices of The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy…
I dunno, but it told 4th generation me to “go back where I came from”…
But what happens if we mix this with Vantablack? I’m going to make a $500,000.00 “art” installment that slowly drips the two together into a tupperware shaped like the United States (let the speculative meaning-fest commence!)
Maintenance, mainly. Anything painted needs regular re-painting, and anything white needs regular cleaning. Painting a roof white is a maintenance nightmare.
Trouble is, in tropical climates the roof often gets algae growth that degrades the albedo affect. We looked at using reflective coatings on roofs in the Pacific islands and the reflective nature didn’t last long enough to be cost effective, or the maintenance inputs cancelled out the savings. (As @VeronicaConnor points out).
there are downsides to both but one must be worse.
