Energy simulation outputs for different mitigation scenarios

Advanced urban heat mitigation technologies that involve the use of super
cool materials combined with properly designed green infrastructure, lower
the urban ambient and land surface temperatures and reduce the cooling
consumption at the city scale. We present the results of the world’s
largest heat mitigation project in Riyadh, KSA. Daytime radiative coolers
as well as cool materials combined with irrigated or non-irrigated
greenery, have been used to design eight holistic heat mitigation
scenarios. We assessed the climatic impact of the scenarios as well as the
corresponding energy benefits of 3,323 urban buildings. An impressive
decrease of the peak ambient temperature, up to 4.5°C, is calculated,
consisting of the highest reported urban ambient temperature reduction,
while the annual sum of the differences of the ambient temperature against
a standard temperature base, (cooling degree hours), in the city decrease
by up to 26%. We found that innovative urban heat mitigation strategies
contribute to remarkable cooling energy conservation by up to 16%, while
the combined implementation of heat mitigation and energy adaptation
technologies decreases the cooling demand by up to 35%. It is the first
article investigating the large-scale energy benefits of modern heat
mitigation technologies when they are implemented in cities.