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Much research has gone into technologies to mitigate urban heat islands by making urban surfaces cooler by increasing their albedos. To be practical, the benefit of the technology must be greater than its cost. This report provides simple methods for quantifying the maxima of some benefits that albedo increases may provide. The method used is an extension of an earlier paper that estimated the maximum possible electrical energy saving achievable in an entire city in a year by a change of albedo of its surfaces. The present report estimates the maximum amounts and monetary savings of avoided CO2 emissions and the decreases in peak power demands. As examples, for several warm cities in California, a 0.2 increase in albedo of pavements is found to reduce CO2 emissions by < 1 kg per m2 per year. At the current price of CO2 reduction in California, the monetary saving is < US$ 0.01 per year per m2 modified. The resulting maximum peak-power reductions are estimated to be < 7% of the base power of the city. The magnitudes of the savings are such that decision-makers should choose carefully which urban heat island mitigation techniques are cost effective.

We present a simple method to estimate the maximum possible energy saving that might be achieved by increasing the albedo of surfaces in a large city. We restrict this to the "indirect effect", the cooling of outside air that lessens the demand for air conditioning (AC). Given the power demand of the electric utilities and data about the city, we can use a single linear equation to estimate the maximum saving. For example, the result for an albedo change of 0.2 of pavements in a typical warm city in California, such as Sacramento, is that the saving is less than about 2 kW·h of electrical energy per modified m2 per year. This may help decision makers choose which heat island mitigation techniques are economical from an energy-saving perspective.

Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the risk of prostate cancer (PC). It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score (Gleason ≤6, 7, ≥8) and aggressiveness (non-aggressive, intermediate, and aggressive disease). Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 (G) was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive (OR = 0.77; 95 % CI 0.69–0.87) and high-grade disease (OR = 0.77; 95 % CI 0.68–0.86) in European men. Similar associations with aggressive (OR = 0.72; 95 % CI 0.58–0.89) and high-grade disease (OR = 0.69; 95 % CI 0.54–0.87) were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels (

Part of the urban heat island effect can be attributed to dark pavements that are commonly used on streets and parking lots. In this paper we consider two light colored, hence cooler, alternative paving materials that are in actual use in cities today. These are Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavements and chip seals. We report measurements of the albedos of some PCC and chip sealed pavements in the San Francisco Bay Area. The albedos of the PCC pavements ranged from about 0.18 to 0.35. The temperatures of some PCC pavements are also measured and calculated. We then consider how the albedos of the constituent materials of the PCC (stone, sand and cement) contribute to the albedos of the resulting finished concrete. The albedos of a set of chip sealed pavements in San Jose, CA, were measured and correlated with the times of their placement. It is found that the albedos decrease with age (and use) but remain higher than that of standard asphalt concrete (AC) for about five years. After that, the albedos of the chip seals are about 0.12, similar to aged AC. The fact that many PCC pavements have albedos at least twice as high as aged AC suggests that it is possible to have pavement albedos that remain high for many years.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the life cycle costs and market barriers associated with using reflective paving materials in streets and parking lots as a way to reduce the urban heat island effect. We calculated and compared the life cycle costs of conventional asphalt concrete (AC) pavements to those of other existing pavement technologies with higher reflectivity-portland cement concrete (PCC), porous pavements, resin pavements, AC pavements using light-colored chip seals, and AC pavements using light-colored asphalt emulsion additives. We found that for streets and parking lots, PCC can provide a cost-effective alternative to conventional AC when severely damaged pavements must be completely reconstructed. We also found that rehabilitating damaged AC streets and intersections with thin overlays of PCC (ultra-thin white topping) can often provide a cost-effective alternative to standard rehabilitation techniques using conventional AC. Chip sealing is a common maintenance treatment for low-volume streets which, when applied using light-colored chips, could provide a reflective pavement surface. If the incremental cost of using light-colored chips is low, this chip sealing method could also be cost-effective, but the incremental costs of light-colored chips are as of yet uncertain and expected to vary. Porous pavements were found to have higher life cycle costs than conventional AC in parking lots, but several cost-saving features of porous pavements fell outside the boundaries of this study. Resin pavements were found to be only slightly more expensive than conventional AC, but the uncertainties in the cost and performance data were large. The use of light-colored additives in asphalt emulsion seal coats for parking lot pavements was found to be significantly more expensive than conventional AC, reflecting its current niche market of decorative applications. We also proposed two additional approaches to increasing the reflectivity of conventional AC, which we call the chipping and aggregate methods, and calculated their potential life cycle costs. By analyzing the potential for increased pavement durability resulting from these conceptual approaches, we then estimated the incremental costs that would allow them to be cost-effective compared to conventional AC. For our example case of Los Angeles, we found that those allowable incremental costs range from less than $1 to more than $11 per square yard ($1 to $13 per square meter) depending on street type and the condition of the original pavement. Finally, we evaluated the main actors in the pavement market and the existing and potential market barriers associated with reflective pavements. Apart from situations where lifecycle costs are high compared to conventional AC, all reflective paving technologies face a cultural barrier based on the belief that black is better. For PCC, high first costs were found to be the most significant economic barrier, particularly where agencies are cons trained by first cost. Lack of developer standards was found to be a significant institutional barrier to PCC since developers are often not held accountable for the long-term maintenance of roads after initial construction, which creates a misplaced incentive to build low first-cost pavements. PCC also faces site-specific barriers such as poorly compacted base soils and proximity to areas of frequent utility cutting.

A semi-quantitative connection between the albedo of pavements and its effect on the diurnal variation of air temperature in large cities is presented. Measurements of albedos and temperatures of a variety of asphalt concrete pavements in the easstern San Francisco Bay Area of California were made. The albedos correlate with pavement age. The time dependence of the pavement temperature is measured and calculated. Measurements show that the albedo of a chip-seal is about 70% of the albedo of the aggregates from wwhich it is constructed. A formula to approximate the reduction of the peak air temperature by higher albedo pavement is derived and compared favorably to simulations.