- The Heat Island Effect and smog are affecting areas around Federal facilities.
What is a Heat Island?
- Heat islands are areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas, resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.
Heat Islands cause:
- Increased summertime peak energy demand
- Increased air conditioning costs
- air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
- Heat-related illness and mortality
- Poor water quality
What is being done to fix this?
- There is a bill proposed called the Heat Island and Smog Reduction act of 2011, bill H.R.51.
- This act requires each federal agency, by April 1, 2012, to develop a heat island reduction plan for all federal property and facilities under its possession or control that are located in an area designated under the Clean Air Act as being in nonattainment with national ambient air quality standards for ozone.
The act requires each plan to include measures to:
- Maximize tree cover on federal property
- Increase solar reflectivity through techniques such as roofs with solar reflectivity
- Vegetated roofs
- Paving materials with higher solar reflectivity. Requires the Administrator of the General Services to submit annual reports to specified congressional committees assessing agency progress in developing and implementing such plans.
The bill passing will lead to:
- Reduction of energy demand
- Lower air conditioning costs
- Less air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
- Fewer heat-related illness and mortality
- Better water quality
This is really a GREEN issue, and quite interesting. The causes I believe affect almost everyone, so everyone should take interest in this, but that's probably not the case. And if the bill is passed, it doesn't seem to lead to anything negative, so again I vote yes for lower air conditioning costs, less air pollution, fewer heat-related mortality, and better water quality!
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