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White roofs are good for the environment!

2021-05-26T03:40:18.661Z


Repainting the roofs white to refresh the cities: this is the simple and green idea of ​​Cool Roof, a Breton company today


" Do you see the difference ? Lay your hand on the usual dark coating, and now on ours, the white ... The solar reflectivity index is clearly not the same. “Indeed, the temperature difference is startling! Frédéric Lachêvre, entrepreneur from Finistère and manager of the building stock of many local Leclerc centers, checks the evolution of the roof of Leclerc du Gourvili, in Quimper (Finistère), of which he is also director. A roof like no other, because it was the first in Europe to be repainted "à la Cool Roof (

Editor's note: roof cooled by translating from English

)". That is to say a technique of thermal insulation of buildings by the roof, and more precisely by a specific repainting… all in white.

“It's a way of doing things that is both Mediterranean and ancestral,” he says.

But I really discovered this new way of bringing it back to life on a trip to New York.

"It was 11 years ago, in the heart of the Big Apple, that he discovered, by chance," cool roofing ".

“I was already trying to reduce the energy consumption of the Quimper store,” he says.

But I wasn't sure how to do it.

It got me thinking, and when I got back I took the idea with me.

"

About 7 ° C less passively in summer

In 2013, he decided, accompanied by two partners, Ronan Caradec, boss of Madec Électricité in Landivisiau, and Cédric Corre, of the Quimper company Corre Peinture, to carry out a full-scale test on the 7,000 m2 of the roof of his store. Successful bet ! Results of the races: “Quimper is around 7 ° C less passively in summer, 15,000 euros in electricity bill savings per year and 2 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year. On other buildings, we are up to 15 ° C in comfort. "

After two years of reflection and upstream work, he embarked on the Cool Roof France adventure and filed the company's statutes. "I like simple things, which can help avoid overproduction, overconsumption," explains Frédéric Lachêvre. The particularity of Cool Roof: its partnership with the French chemical group Arkema, which allows it to use a resin overcoat that allows lasting protection of the whiteness and reflectivity of its paints “up to 20 years”. And now, the novelty, and not the least, developed by the R&D of Cool Roof, after two years of research with the support of the Brittany region, is a unique paint made from oyster shells. "A great way to recover our natural waste, in the most ecological way possible", rejoices Frédéric Lachêvre.

Read alsoCanicule: what will our summers look like in 2050?

The small Breton TPE based in Faou, once silent, is starting to accumulate rewards, from regional to international.

It now has 21 employees and works with large groups (SNCF, Total, EDF, LVMH, etc.).

“We have achieved a little over 250,000 m2 for the moment;

everywhere in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal and a little in Spain and Italy… And that has only just begun, predicts Frédéric Lachêvre.

We are considered to be the European leaders in Cool Roofing and we have signed contracts with 12 CAC 40 companies… This is no small feat for a very small company at the end of the world.

”Whose story started on the other side of the Atlantic.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-05-26

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