The little known “Roof Dark” lobby can make cities hotter

Started with a pitch.

Tennessee’s representative Rusty Grills says a lobbyist proposed a simple idea: to repeal the state requirement for reflective roofs in many commercial buildings. At the end of March, Grills and his colleagues voted to eliminate the rule, scrapping a measure aimed at saving energy, reducing temperatures and protecting Tennesseans from extreme heat. Grills, a Republican, said he introduced the bill to give consumers more.

It was another victory for a well -organized pressure campaign led by manufacturers of dark ceiling materials.

Industry representatives called Tennessee deployment a necessary correction, as more of the state moved to a hotter climate area, expanding the extent of the state’s fresh roof rule. Critics called him dangerous and “misleading”.

“The new law will involve greater energy and greater diseases and death costs related to heat,” wrote the Harold Love state representative and rector Jon Robinson in a statement.

He warned, will make Nashville, Memphis and other cities hotter, especially in the diminished black and Latin communities, where many struggle to pay for their public service bills. Similar lobbying has played Denver, Baltimore and national level.

The representative of the State of Tennessee, Rusty Grills, is seen on the day of the opening of the legislative session of 2025. After listening to a lobbyist from an organization that represents the manufacturers of dark ceiling materials, the grids sponsored a bill that released the requirements in Tennessee to install clear colored roofs in commercial buildings. Erik Schelzig / State Affairs photo

Industry groups have called into question the science of the decades behind the fresh roofs, reduced the advantages and warned of the reduced choice and the unwanted consequences. “A unique approach that adapts to everything does not consider climate variation in different regions,” said Ellen Thorp, the executive director of the EPDM Roofing Association, who represents an industry mainly built in dark materials.

But the weight of scientific evidence is clear: hot days, light roofs can be more than 50 ° colder than dark, helping to reduce energy, stop greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. A recent study found that reflective ceilings could have saved the lives of more than 240 people who died in the 2018 London heat.

At least eight states – and more than a dozen cities in other states – have adopted fresh ceiling requirements, according to the Smart Surface Coallation, a national group of public and environmental health groups that promote reflective roofs, trees and other solutions to make cities healthier.

Industry representatives have successfully pressured in recent months to expand fresh ceiling recommendations in national energy efficiency codes: the standards that many cities and states use to establish building regulations.

The bets are high. As global temperatures increase and heat waves grow more deadly, roofs on our heads have become a battlefield in a consequent climate war. It is happening when the Trump Administration and Congress transfer measures designed to make appliances and buildings more energy efficient.

Why does it import the color of the roof

The principle is simple: light -colored roofs reflect the sunlight, so the buildings are cooler. The dark absorb the heat, increasing the temperatures inside the buildings and the surrounding air.

According to researchers, the ceilings include up to a quarter of the surface of large American cities, so that the color of roofs can make a big difference in urban areas.

How hot can the dark ceilings make?

“You can physically burn your hands on these ceilings,” said Bill Updike, who used to install solar panels and now works for the Smart Surface coalition.

The study after the study has confirmed the advantages of light roofs. They save energy, reduce air conditioning bills and reduce the temperatures of the city. They help prevent heat -related diseases. And they usually cost more than dark roofs.

A study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the United States Energy Department found that a fresh roof in a house in the center of California saved 20% on annual energy costs.

Howdy Goudey, a scientific engineering partner, construction technology and urban systems (BTUs), checks the levels of a matrix testing apparatus that measures a type of passive radiative refrigeration film, on the roof of building 59, in the National Laboratory of Lawrence Berkeley. Photo of Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab

In a three -storey house in Baltimore, Owen Henry discovered what difference a fresh roof can make.

Living in a part of the city with few trees-and where summer temperatures often climb in the 1990’s-Henry wanted to cut off his power bills and stay cooler while working in his third floor office. Thus, in 2023, he used white reflective ceiling paint worth $ 100 to coat his roof.

Henry said he and his wife immediately saw the inner temperature lowering. They reduced their electricity consumption, 24%.

Fresh lands, hot debate

Known for its durability, a black synthetic rubber known as EPDM once dominated the commercial roof. But in recent years it has been surpassed by TPO, a single -frame plastic material that is usually white and is more suitable for meeting the growing demand for reflective ceilings.

The main manufacturers of the EPDM, including the Johns Manville, Carlisle Syntec and Alta, a division of the Swiss multinational company Holcim, have fought against the regulations that threaten to further reduce their market share.

Kurt Shickman, a former executive director of the Global Cities Alliance, said that these companies have money to hire top -notch pressure groups who know their way through hearing rooms and are first with decision -making.

The EPDM industry has paid for research that has stated that the impact of fresh roof mandates is not conclusive and that isolation plays a more important role in energy saving than fresh ceilings.

Workers in 2018 installed a new roof at Rogers Center, headquarters of the Toronto Blue Jays basketball team. It has been shown that white roofs like these reduce air conditioning bills and decrease the exterior air temperature. Photo courtesy of the Vinyl Roofing Division of The Chemical Fabrics and Film Association

In an email response to Floodlight’s questions, Thorp argued that many of the studies cited to support fresh roof mandates leave important factors, such as local climatic variations, ceiling type, trees marquee and insulation.

He pointed out a recent study by Harvard researchers who concluded that white roofs and pavements can reduce precipitation, causing temperatures to increase unexpectedly in the surrounding regions.

But Haider Taha, a leading urban heat expert, identified multiple defects in Harvard’s study, stating: “The study conclusions do not provide current views on urban cooling strategies or policy.”

A struggle for fresh roofs in Baltimore

When Baltimore discussed a fresh roof ordinance in 2022, the Thorp group and the Asphalt Manufacturers Association (weapon) strongly pressured against it, arguing that dark roofs are the most efficient choice of “northern climates like Baltimore”.

In cold climates, representatives of the industry point out, fresh ceilings can lead to higher winter heating invoices.

“Current research does not support the adoption of fresh ceilings as a measure will achieve improved energy efficiency or a reduced urban heat island,” Thorp wrote in a letter to a council member.

Several studies show the opposite. They have concluded that reflective ceilings save energy and fresh cities alleviating the “urban Heat Island” effect: the additional heat that is trapped in many neighborhoods of the city because the buildings and the pavement soak the sun.

Researchers have also found that even in most cold -American cold climates the energy saving of fresh ceilings for warmer months exceeds the added heating costs in winter.

Despite the opposition, Baltimore passed a fresh roof ordinance by 2023.

Opponents of fresh ceiling requirements, such as Baltimore, say they have a complex problem. In an email to Floodlight, the executive vice president of weapons, Reed Hitchcock, said that these rules are not a “magic bullet”. He encouraged the regulators to consider a “focus of the whole building”: one that weighs the isolation, the shading and the climate, as well as the color of the roof to preserve the flexibility of the design and the choice of the consumer.

Henry, the owner of Baltimore, said he believed that the city’s ordinance will help all residents. “Phooey to any manufacturer trying to prevent us from keeping our community and turning it into a nice place to live,” he said.

The industry is achieved in Denver, Tennessee

Any other place, industry lobbyists have won. They have successfully pressured a fresh roof ordinance in Denver and against strictest rules established by the American Society of Calmination, Refrigeration and Air Conditioned Engineers (ASHRAE): a professional organization that creates model standards for the state and city regulations of the city.

The current Ashrae standard recommends reflective roofs on commercial buildings in the weather areas of the United States 1, 2 and 3: the hottest regions in the country. Most of the southern, Hawaii, almost all of Texas, areas of the Mexican border and most of California are included.

“We have been able to stop all of these … the mandates sink to the climate zone 4 and 5,” Thorp said in a recent interview.

Another group led by Thorp, the coalition for sustainable ceilings, worked with the lobbyist to propose the bill that eliminated the Tennessee’s fresh roof requirement.

This rule was once applied to commercial buildings in only 14 of the 95 counties of the State, but an update of climate maps in 2021 extended the requirements to 20 more counties, including its most populous urban area, Nashville.

As Mercury stands, the owner chooses a reflective roof

Brian Spear, owner of the house of Tempee, Arizona, has lived in the Phoenix area since the 1980’s, when there was less than 30 days a year when the temperature reached 110 °. Last year, there were 70 of those days, the highest of the record, only remained in 2023, when there were 55 days of 110 ° more.

These days, summer mornings begin to devastate, he says, “And I feel like you go between 10 and 4, it’s dangerous.”

Spear says he will soon replace the aged roof in an Airbnb house he has. After weighing the usual concerns (cost and aesthetics), he has chosen an area that he believes will help rather than harm: a gray metal roof with a reflective coating.

“If someone told me you couldn’t put a dark ceiling in your house … I would understand it,” he said. “I am for the common good.”

Floodlight It is a non -profit news room that investigates the powerful interests that stop from climate action.