 Beautiful. Now, one and all, we've got a cool show for you today. Cool as in cool roofs and cool. Here in Hawaii, we're interested in terms of comfort in the interior, only in keeping the heat out. If it gets too cold on a winter morning, we'd put on fuzzy slippers. We walk on rugs. We put an extra blanket on the bed. So it's strictly heat mitigation that we are interested in. And when you think about all the ways to keep the heat out of a home or a building, when you really think about it, probably the most cost effective and resource efficient method of doing that is by having cool walls. Those are walls that accept the radiant heat, the sun's energy, and bounce it back to the atmosphere. And there's something called high emittance where the heat that does get into that coating emits, also emits back to the atmosphere. And we apply that both to walls and roofs. So who better to talk about this than the government affairs coordinator and manager extraordinaire of the Cool Roof Rating Council and the Cool Wall Rating Council. Oh, and before I turn it over to Audrey Begarro, let me say that this morning in the Energy Office, we had a talk with SIA, the Southeast Efficiency Alliance. And Hawaii is now an integral part of that, even though we're way off to the West. And I introduced the fact that we have in common with those hot humid states there, the fact that cool walls, cool roofs are integral to keeping the heat out naturally, and they welcome the idea very much. So, Audrey, we have yet another ally on the team. So on that very cheery note, let's turn it over to Ms. Cool Roof Cool Wall herself, Audrey Begarro. Take it away, Audrey. Thanks, Howard. Well, that's wonderful news. Yeah, just to introduce myself, I'm the project manager of the Cool Roof Rating Council. We are a 501C3 nonprofit organization based in the United States. Our primary role is providing third-party product ratings for roofing exterior wall products related to their radiative properties, which Howard described as their solar reflectance and thermal elements, which helps keep buildings out, sorry, keeps heat out of buildings. So if you want to go ahead and pull up the first slide, the second slide, actually, before we begin, just wanted to outline a little bit, you know, Howard mentioned that, obviously, heat is the primary concern in Hawaii. You don't have to deal too much with cold weather. But just to kind of put this topic of heat into perspective, heat is the leading weather-related cause of human mortality across the United States, and it is responsible for more deaths than things like hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, etc. And he can be really dangerous because it can also exacerbate existing health conditions. So a lot of times it's actually tricky to really understand the full impact that heat is having on people's health and on mortality because it can be conflated with other things, especially during extreme heat events. Also, of course, people living without air conditioning can be more susceptible to the dangers of extreme heat. Heat is exacerbated by what's called the urban heat island or UHI effect. This is something that occurs when urban areas like Honolulu are hotter than their surrounding suburban or rural areas. To provide a couple examples, more than eight out of 10 Americans live in urban areas, and 41 million of those Americans live in areas that are at least eight degrees Fahrenheit higher than their surroundings. If you think about eight degrees Fahrenheit, that is a huge difference when it comes to comfort and safety and the many negative impacts of heat. Next slide. All right, Audrey, let me interject and say that I am blessed to live in Manoa Valley, very green lush area. When I go down just three miles to the flat lands where the urban area is, the temperature increases in just three miles. In the flat lands, it's say 84 degrees in Manoa, 76 degrees. Very, very dramatic. We have microclimates here in Hawaii because of our mountains. That's a great segue into, I wanted to talk a little bit about what is causing this difference in heat. Howard, you mentioned the mountains and the sort of bigger geographic things that can affect it. On a more micro scale, we also have a lot of reasons why a city can be hotter than its surroundings. Number one, a high concentration of dark and impervious surfaces. Things like roofs, walls, roads, parking lots, pretty much any of your conventional building materials tend to be dark. They tend to be impervious water and they absorb and retain a lot of heat that ends up getting trapped in urban environments. Of course, there's also a relative lack of trees and green space. Trees and plants naturally cool the air when they're around in greater quantities, but we experience a lack of that natural cooling when there are less trees and plants built into the urban landscape. Also, something called urban canyons, which are tall buildings that link sidewalks and streets. These trap air and slow air movement, which tends to keep it both hotter and lower air quality because pollutants that are getting trapped there aren't making their way out of the city as easily. Finally, things like other sources of heat besides the sun, think air conditioners, exhaust from vehicles, is just pumping more heat in that's getting trapped and making cities hotter than their surroundings. This urban heat has many negative impacts. I already talked about heat illness and death, but there's also a lot of other impacts that people might not always think about. It's been found that higher temperatures actually contribute to reduced productivity at school and at work, and they've also been linked to greater work-related accidents, possibly because people are less focused or more heat stressed on the job. Things like damage to key infrastructure like power grids and water supplies, as well as lower air quality, like I mentioned earlier, which is due to a couple factors. One, because hotter air actually moves slower, and then also because warmer environments are a breeding ground for ground level ozone, which is a pollutant that can be harmful to your respiratory system and is also an ingredient in smog. Lastly, I do want to point out that these impacts of urban heat disproportionately affect certain groups and certain areas of cities. Links have been found between higher urban temperatures and areas where lower income people live and where people of color live. This is also a bit of an environmental justice issue as well. If we move along to the next couple of slides, I'm going to introduce again this topic of cool roofs and walls. Howard, I don't know if you have anything to add before we move on. No, I'll fill in as you go. Cool roofs and cool walls are ones that highly reflect solar energy and efficiently emit heat that is absorbed. Those two properties, the first one is called solar reflectance, which is the proportion of solar energy that is reflected by the surface. This property is measured on a scale from zero to one with one being 100% reflected. So that would mean the surface is reflecting 100% of solar energy that's hitting it. Likewise, thermal emittance is also measured on a scale of zero to one with one being the most thermally emissive. Basically, when you have higher values of SR and TE, what you're going to see is the surface thing cooler and transferring less solar energy as heat into the building, which keeps indoor temperatures cooler as well. On screen here is an example of that phenomenon. Here we're looking at a dark wall and a light wall. It's not really necessarily a black and white issue. We're going to talk about that more later about other color technologies that are out there. But for the purpose of providing an example, you can see that the dark blackish wall in the sun is nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the lighter white colored wall. Both of those photos were taken at the same time under the same conditions. So just a quick illustration of that difference in surface temperature just based on color alone. So moving this along into discussions of saving on cooling, saving energy when you're talking about air conditioning. Cool exterior walls in particular are the focus of this presentation. I do want to mention that pretty much everything I'm saying about walls can also be applied to roofs and in a slightly greater magnitude, roofs do have more of an impact on a building solar heat gain than walls do due to the orientation, the way that roofs are interacting with solar radiation as opposed to walls. But for walls in particular, studies have shown that in U.S. climate zones one through four, of which Hawaii is located in climate zone one, cool walls can provide HVAC energy savings annually. So what we see in some northern climates of the United States is that there's something called the winter heating penalty where just as a cool surface will help you lower your energy bills in the summer, you could see an increase in heating costs in the winter in northern climates. For Hawaii, obviously that is not of high concern. So you're really just going to see savings on energy and more comfortable temperatures throughout the year. Audrey, let me interrupt with a very, very interesting story. I was at a energy codes conference in St. Paul, Minnesota some years ago and we were touring a nursing facility, brand new, built to the highest, highest efficiency standards, and we got up to the roof and the roof was black. I said, what the heck is going on here? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, take that back. The roof was white. And I said, what the heck is going on here? And the building manager said, what do you mean? And I said, this is St. Paul, Minnesota. You have severe winters. Don't you want to coat the roof black so that you can absorb the winter sun, melt the snow easier, and save a lot on your heating energy? And he said, no, we are so efficient in this building that heating is a very, very low cost component. And also, we've found that even here, the air conditioning cost is greater than the heating costs. And therefore, we're keeping this surface white so we can reflect the heat back up St. Paul, Minnesota. So that's really interesting little tidbit there. Yeah. And I imagine if snow is covering the roof most of the winter, anyway, you wouldn't really be getting a lot of benefit from that black roof anyway. I wanted to talk a little bit more. I had mentioned earlier that cool roofs and walls aren't a black and white issue. So I wanted to kind of expand on that a little bit. So first of all, you might, you know, when you picture cool roof, the first thing that comes to mind might be a bright white black roof. That is certainly a very common and a very effective way to achieve a high solar reflectance, right? So white off white pastel colors are all going to naturally be reflecting a lot of solar radiation, which is fantastic. That being said, a lot of times people are looking for darker or different colors that conventionally might not have a very high solar reflectance. And that is where products that are specifically formulated to reflect infrared radiation come into play. These go by a few different names. The example on screen they're referred to as spectrally selective. They're also called infrared reflecting or IR pigments. But the technology is all the same idea, which is that we have pigments that are specially formulated to reflect invisible infrared light. So they're staying cooler in the sun, but they are still reflecting visible light in whatever amount is desired for the particular color that you're trying to achieve. So these products are available on the market for various types of both roofing and wall materials. We see them for decades. They've been used in the coated metal industry. So a metal roof, metal wall panels, things of that nature are available using these spectrally selective pigments. Looking at residential roofs, there are asphalt shingles that have solar reflective granules. Same idea. Also paints and coatings that are formulated with similar technologies. So that's really a great way. And we want to make sure people are educated about that fact is that when we're talking about cool roofs and walls, we're talking about all of it, right? We're talking about anything that is going to be increasing that solar reflectance in order to stay cool. So I wanted to transition into talking a little bit about incentives and codes and programs and how all of that relates to this idea of cool exterior walls. Again, cool roofs have been pretty prolific in certain climates for a while now. So they are much more established in codes, programs and standards. So I want to talk a little bit about cool walls and how those fit in. The state of Hawaii is actually the first and only United state of the United States to include cool exterior walls in their building energy code. So as you know, the Hawaii Building Energy Code is based on the 2018 IECC with state adopted amendments. And part of these amendments are an installation trade-off and compliance credit for the installation of exterior walls with a visible light reflectance of 0.64 or higher. And that is for newly constructed tropical homes. I believe that this requirement is in the process of being updated. Howard, I don't know if you want to elaborate. When we first adopted the IECC codes, the mainland requirement was for when you re-roofed a flat roof and it was uninsulated, you had to put insulation either on top of the roof deck or below the roof deck. And the roofing association of Hawaii came and visited me personally and said, Howard, this is going to double the cost in re-roofing. If you try to amend like this, we're going to go to legislature and we're going to fight this tooth and nail. Oh, okay. So we amended that by saying you shall have an energy star level of reflectance on this new roof in lieu of the insulation. And that worked for a while, but then came Girl California Title 24. And they have a higher level of initial reflectance, there's initial reflectance, three-year reflectance, and emittance. All of that was higher. And the roofing council agreed that we would update those levels so that the reflectance is even greater for re-roofing of flat roofs. So that was another improvement we made. And of course that reduces the heat transmittance even more. I want to also call out that there are several model codes and standards that have cool exterior walls written into them. Those examples are on the slide here, but I want to specifically mention ASHRAE standard 90.1. ASHRAE standard 90.1 has a pool wall requirement for climate zones zero. So that doesn't actually apply anywhere in the United States, including Hawaii, but they also, the standard also includes a small compliance credit for climate zones one and above. So of course that includes climates throughout the U.S. And for that, compliance credit, newly constructed buildings that use exterior wall materials with a solar reflectance greater than .25 can earn the compliance credit. And moving on to green building certifications, the LEED rating system also offers credit for cool exterior walls. This is a pilot credit that came out a few years ago. And in order to earn the credit, you have to surface your building at least 60% of the building's gross exterior wall area with a material that has an unweathered solar reflectance of at least .6 and an initial thermal emittance of at least .75. Furthermore, the ANSI GBI01 standard, which is the basis for the Green Globes certification program, also contains a cool exterior wall requirement for climate zones other than .6 and .8. So moving on, talking about compliance here in Hawaii and earning these voluntary green building certifications that I just mentioned, more and more people are turning to third-party verified data. So data that is provided by an entity other than just a manufacturer of a product. So that's really where the CRRC comes in. We are a third-party entity. We work with independent laboratories, accredited independent laboratories to perform testing for products that obtain a CRRC rating. These products are also weathered, exposed to the natural environment for three years at approved test farms that are also vetted and approved by the CRRC. And all of this data is available for free publicly on our directory at coolroofs.org slash directory. We maintain separate directories for both roofing products and exterior wall products. So I would encourage if anyone is interested in the idea of cool roofs and walls or working on a project that's using them, the CRRC directories are a fantastic resource for finding that third-party data. Moving on to slide 14, we also have several other resources available on our website. Specifically, I want to call out our codes, programs, and standards database. The screenshots on screen are actually a little bit out of date because we just recently totally revamped that webpage. There's a lot more detail now on that site about the actual summary of the requirements of these different codes and standards per jurisdiction. So you can get on there and see what are the rules for cool roofs in Honolulu and not information, easy access on our website. And then we also have links to the actual code language, which it is very important to always check because codes get updated. But that's a really great repository if you're interested in learning more about requirements in your specific area. Finally, on the last slide here, we also have a lot of educational resources on our website. This spans from one to two to three page PDFs, all about different topics. If you're interested in learning more about the urban heat island effect or about heat equity, we have a new document that came out last summer specific to using cool roofs and walls kind of through that heat equity lens. Lots of documents that go into more detail about the technical nature of our programs and all that good stuff. So that's about all I have prepared, Howard. Do you have any questions or want me to go into any more detail? I'll give you a quiz. I ECC energy codes, flat commercial rules. Does the I ECC have anything to say about reflectance? That's a quiz for you. I actually don't know. I am not the codes expert on our team, but I'd like for you to fill us in. This is something I used to sit on the National Committees and something I and some other people bought hard for and won. Flat commercial rules, new construction must conform to the energy star levels of reflectance and that starts at 0.65 reflectance for climate zones 1, 2, 3. We're in climate zone 1 in Hawaii, 2 is the southern southern most states and in climate zone 3 gets up into about the the middle of the Dixie states across Texas and so forth. So we have cool rules embedded and I ECC is the most used on that national standard. And I will say that the most, oh, I've done a lot of temperature measurement myself. Shooting a dark wall, it's getting direct solar radiation over here and then there's a white surface right over here and I traditionally have gotten on a hot afternoon temperature difference of easy 50 degrees and I saw and added in the paper some years ago there was a picture of a fellow up on a roof rolling down very, very high reflectance coating and this was on a school roof and very rough asphalt and he was just going over that rough dark asphalt and the temperature before with the dark surface was 178 the temperature after 104 a drop of 74 degrees and these schools are not for the most part air conditioned and what a temperature difference for interior that would make and a little side note, we had a heat wave some years ago and kids in schools, unconditioned schools were literally sweating onto their paper. Very, very poor working environment actually could be a health hazard and everybody was saying AC AC AC and people like me pointed out put AC into a hot environment like that. It's like putting an ice cube into an oven. So we've been pretty successful in requiring reflective rules on school rules when a new job on the roof is needed and oh when you reduce the AC use as you would because your interior temperature isn't naturally much cooler when you reduce the AC and you're getting that AC the electricity from either coal gas or oil in our case when you reduce that level of fuel use you're reducing the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere and CO2 carbon dioxide is the main particulate matter that's holding the heat in and is responsible for climate change. So any final quick party notes on that cherry note Audrey? Well I think you make an excellent point and that's the beauty of cool surfaces is you know they have impacts at the very local level and all the way up to helping to reduce carbon emissions. So yeah thank you so much for having me it was it was great to be able to talk. Thank you so much Audrey and we'll be seeing you well before too awfully long. So on that very cherry note we bid fond of you Howard Wing, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. See you next time. If you liked this show why don't you give us a like or subscribe to our channel. Thanks so much.