15/7/09: Toronto acts to reduce heat-island effect

The City of Toronto, Canada, is implementing a green roofs policy to reduce the heat island effect.

This followed a study

http://www.toronto.ca/greenroofs/findings.htm

which found that 'widespread implementation of green roofs in Toronto would provide significant economic benefits to the City, particularly in the areas of stormwater management and reducing the urban heat island (and the energy use associated therewith).'

As noted here, as it gets hotter, people are going to guzzle more electricity to power air-conditioning systems, creating a postive feedback loop by adding to climate change gases.

Not only should we have such a policy here, but there should be a requirement to 'offset' more than a few square metres of paving with new permeable surfaces (i.e. digging some up somewhere else) and/or retro-fitting exiting structures with green roofing.