Global Cool Cities: Tools for Cooling Urban Heat Islands

Roofs and pavements cover about 60% of urban surfaces, and absorb more than 80% of the sunlight that contacts them. This energy is converted to heat, which results in hotter, more polluted cities, and higher energy costs. As energy costs rise and our planet grows warmer, nations turn to simple low cost solutions to address these problems.

In this webinar-based training, Kurt Shickman, Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA) discusses how cool roof and pavement materials can mitigate urban island heat effects, lower energy costs, and improve the environment. Mr. Shickman also provides information on the GCCA’s Cool Roofs and Cool Pavements Toolkit and the newly launched Urban Heat Island and Cool Surfaces Knowledge Base. The toolkit is designed to provide policymakers and practitioners the tools they need to cool buildings, cities, and the planet. The knowledge base, a repository for cool surface and urban heat island information, allows the user to find program and policy materials, research, sample documents, case studies, codes and standards, videos, images and other relevant items from around the world.

Presenter

Kurt Shickman, Executive Director, Global Cool Cities Alliance (International)

Kurt Shickman is the Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA). Prior to joining GCCA, Shickman was the Director of Research for the Energy Future Coalition and the United Nations Foundation’s Energy and Climate team. His work involved building broad and diverse coalitions of stakeholders around key clean energy and climate change policies at the local, state, and federal levels with a particular emphasis on dramatically scaling up the deployment of energy efficiency in existing residential and commercial buildings.