Govt drafts cool roof mitigation policy

PNS|Hyderabad

The Telangana government has drafted a cool roof policy aiming to implement 100 sq.km of cool roof area in Hyderabad and 300 sq.km all over Telangana, Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MA&UD) Special Secretary Arvind Kumar said.

He was speaking at a workshop on Urban Heat Island (UHI) studies done in Hyderabad on Thursday.

The workshop was organised by the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH), India, in partnership with the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

He said, “The Telangana government is keen on taking forward cool roofs as a mitigation measure and the state will be a forerunner on implementing cool roof on a large scale.”

“As cities expand vegetation is lost and surfaces are paved or covered with buildings. This change results in less shade and moisture and therefore urban areas become hotter than rural areas. This is a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. A large amount of heat is released into the atmosphere due to climate change, which is further worsened by UHI (heat generated by human-induced activities like unregulated construction, air conditioners etc) making the environment unbearably hot and sometimes fatal (humidity+UHI effects).

V. Krishna IFS, the Additional Commissioner of GHMC, also attended the workshop and discussed greening Hyderabad with parks and Miyawaki forests as per the greening policy of the Telangana government. The interactive workshop was designed to support ideas and to understand opportunities and challenges in urban heat island mitigation.

The workshop was conducted to explore opportunities for implementing mitigation measures in alignment with the draft Cool Roof Policy for Hyderabad in collaboration with the government and non-governmental partners.

The workshop aimed to disseminate the findings of two action-based research studies on measures to mitigate the health, environmental and energy effects of UHI.

The workshop was attended by municipal corporation staff, especially the PWD who got to understand the UHI phenomenon, and its harmful impact on the city and discussed mitigation action for reducing hotspots through building and nature-based solutions.

Several experiments have been conducted in the last 15 years to understand the impact of cool roofs in reducing temperatures and reducing AC use. Cool roofs are a simple technique which can improve thermal conditions inside non-air-conditioned buildings which do not have access to mechanical cooling such as low-income housing, primary health centres, hospitals and schools.