Mapping the Potential of High-Reflective Roof Coverings in Residential Buildings in Italy

Abstract

The current warming trend of the earth’s climate is making it increasingly necessary to focus on solutions to improve indoor comfort while reducing energy demand for buildings during the hot season. The use of high-reflective products on the building envelope, and particularly on the roof, has been suggested as a potential solution. The overall impact of using high-reflective products on roofs largely depends on the local climatic conditions and on the characteristics of the building, making it difficult to determine whether the use of these products is beneficial without the use of detailed modelling approaches. In this context, this study aims to propose a method to provide indications for designers and policymakers to make early decisions on the potential benefits of the use of high-reflective products on residential buildings, based on simple and readily-available climatic data of the location. The approach, based on the use of state-of-the-art simulation software, allows researchers to obtain a multi-linear regression of the effect of high-reflective products on roofs as a function of the heating degree days and of the local value of the climate vector. The approach is applied to the case of the Italian territory, where a block-of-flats is selected as the reference building, with features common to a significant part of the national residential stock. The proposed approach allows for the provision of a quantitative estimate of the expected impact of high-reflective roof coverings on the energy performance of residential buildings in all Italian municipalities. The analysis shows that high-reflective products on roofs are likely to reduce the building annual energy demand for heating and cooling in 9% to 25% of Italian municipalities, depending on the building energy renovation state. The proposed approach, whose results are expressed also by means of thematic maps, can be replicated to other geographic areas and can be extended to different energy saving technologies.