After a tough competition (made even more difficult by the pandemic) and a long deliberation, the judging panel has selected team Cool Roofs Indonesia from Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) as the winner of the Million Cool Roofs Challenge.
Cool Roofs Indonesia is led by Beta Paramita, an Asst. Professor at UPI, in collaboration with Millennium Solution, USA and Ravi Srinivasan, a Professor at The University of Florida.
Prior to the challenge, cool roofing in Indonesia was not a part of building practices and norms. Any product, if available, was developed locally and not for the express purpose of providing thermal comfort, and was too expensive for most to afford. Awareness of cool roofs, their purpose, their benefits, and product options was also extremely low in the area. UPI, with support from the manufacturer, established a small facility to produce CRRC-rated coatings in Indonesia at a fraction of the price of other available options. They also undertook pilots on residential, government, factory, school, and religious buildings to gather performance data and to raise awareness.
Overall, the team were able to install cool roofs in 15 cities on 70 buildings and have also piloted the solution on rural affordable housing structures, with an aim to update future building specifications to include cool roofs. The team measured and verified indoor air temperature reductions of over 10 degrees Celsius in some of the pilots.