Remodeling is the perfect time to improve daylighting, direct gain heating, and shading with passive solar techniques. It can also provide the best opportunity to add solar water heating or even photovoltaics to a home.
The large scale implementation of high-albedo building materials and urban surfaces and the reforestation of low vegetation urban areas are being encouraged as energy-saving measures. These strategies will result in modification of the physical properties of millions of buildings (e.g roof reflectance) and th ei r microclimates (e.g., shading, wind, and evapotranspiration effects of trees). This paper is about the atmospheric impacts of regional scale changes in building properties, paved-surface characteristics, and their microclimates.
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