Effectiveness of Cool Roof Materials in Limiting Future Cooling Loads and Overheating in the Office Buildings

COP28 closed with an agreement the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. However, many actions are needed to achieve the targets set, such as the complete decarbonisation of the civil sector. The research about the passive solutions for the building envelope is a key point for the decarbonisation strategy. In particular, the design of buildings must pay special attention to resilient solutions that can mitigate the effects of climate change. Based on a previous analysis conducted on current climate data, this paper examines the behaviour of innovative cool roof materials compared to traditional coatings. The case study developed by means of numerical analysis is an office building. For a typical Mediterranean climate, medium-term (2050) and long-term (2080) future weather data (two climate projections) are generated. Comparisons with the effects in current climate are made in terms of energy need for cooling in summer months and operative temperature in the intermediate period. The results highlight the issues arising from the type of considered climate and focus on some key aspects of the design, such as the selection of an optimal thickness for the thermal insulation. Compared to a traditional coating (bitumen), this study demonstrates that the application of cool paints can be a resilient solution to expected climate change, with a 4.7% decrease in cooling energy need.