Experimental investigation on green roofs over buildings

Green roof is a passive cooling technique that stops incoming solar radiation from reaching the building structure below. Many studies have been conducted over the past 10 years to consider the potential building energy benefits of green roofs and have shown that they can offer benefits in energy reduction for winter heating as well as summer cooling. Green roofs have many benefits over conventional roofs: they reduce storm water run-off, the heat island effect in cities and energy requirements for cooling; all of this while sequestering some CO2 from the atmosphere. But because of their expense, the building industry has yet to fully embrace their large-scale implementation. Over the summer', two test structures, one with a green roof and the other with an RCC roof, were built and tested at the Ujjain Engineering College, Ujjain, RGPV University, to determine their cooling potential. Results indicate that the test cell with the green roof consistently performs better than those with the conventional cement RCC roof.