If you live in a sunny place, like Miami Florida, have you noticed the predominant color of buildings/homes roofs? Dark colors almost all the time.

It looks like down here in Miami, we are building homes to accumulate the sun heat, and then we use the air conditioning units to pump out that heat from our buildings and homes. WHAT A MAJOR WASTE OF ENERGY!!!.

The first level of insulation is avoiding the sun's heat to reach our buildings, but dark color roofs is like opening an outside door when your air conditioning is on.

Each 10.8 square feet in your roof receive 1 KW per hour in a sunny day on average. For example if your roof is 100 square feet then that roof receive 10 KW per hour in a sunny day, if we have about 6 hours of sun per day on average, then that roof receive 60 KW of energy per day, in a year that is 21, 900 KW, if that roof have a sunlight absorption coefficient of 0.6 or more (dark material) then about 13,000 KW gets into your roof, the average roof size of a home is 40 feet by 60 feet, so the average roof area is 2400 square feet, therefore the average home roof absorb around 312, 000 KW of heat a year.

Now no mater how good it is your insulation in your home's attic part of these 312,000 KW will pass down to your home and your air conditioning system will have to pump that energy out, so a simple observation will be: Why not minimize the amount of sun heat that will reach my home?

This reference make this point even more appealing:

"According to a new study by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory scientists, there's an astonishingly low-tech solution that may help to cool the planet and reverse global warming. Paint your roof white!!!!!".

Painting your roof white may save up to 15% of your electric bill, and along the way you will make a little contribution to slow down Global warming.

If you want a more active role, contact your local politician and ask then to introduce legislation at local levels that give incentives for more reflective roofs, and even enforce white color for horizontal roofs.

Visit Clean Energy Corp for more concrete ideas about energy savings.