Building energy savings potential of a hybrid roofing system involving high albedo, moisture retaining foam materials

As the environmental, social, and economic issues associated with our energy-intensive urban systems become more pronounced, they continue to drive engineering research towards clean resources and energy efficiency. Since energy demand in buildings is a key contributor to the world's total energy consumption, energy efficiency in buildings is a vital component of future sustainability initiatives. As a result, a large body of research in the past couple of decades has been dedicated to novel rooftop technologies which help reduce the HVAC energy demand in buildings. In this study, an innovative rooftop solution is proposed and evaluated using computer simulations. This proposed roof technology simultaneously incorporates the positive features of common high albedo and vegetated green roofs. While acknowledging the technical and design challenges of this new technology, we conduct proof-of-concept computer simulations to investigate the relative performance of this proposed technology in comparison with green roofs and high albedo roofs. The results show the proposed roof technology can outperform the other two technologies in all U.S representative climates. In addition, the preliminary economic assessment suggests this technology can be viable and may have advantages over competing strategies.