Cool Clay Tiles in Italian Residential Districts: Investigation of the Coupled Thermal-Energy and Environmental Effects

Abstract

Passive strategies for environmental sustainability and energy reduction in the construction industry are becoming increasingly important in, both, the scientific community and the industrial world. Particularly, cool roofs demonstrate acknowledged contribution in cooling energy saving and reducing urban overheating such as urban heat island. Additionally, high albedo strategy has shown promising benefits from a global perspective by counteracting global warming measured by means of CO2eq emission offset. In this view, the present research work combines experimental, numerical, and analytical analysis approaches to measure the impact on energy and the environment from the application of cool clay tiles over the roof of a residential buildings located in central Italy, consistently monitored since 2010. The purposeful investigation demonstrated a consistent CO2 emission compensation of more than 700 tons, 15% of which is produced by the passive cooling contribution of buildings and climate mitigation techniques. The work, therefore, indicated that local energy saving strategies must be combined with larger scale models for performing an exhaustive environmental analysis.