Pittsburgh Turns Bloomberg Grant Into Green Roofs

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 26, 2012 | 12:51 PM

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

The city of Pittsburgh will use a $100,000 grant from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation to build 10 “cool roofs.”
The goal is to lower municipal energy costs by painting the roofs of city-owned building with reflective paint, as the Tribune-Review explains:

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s office will roughly split the grant between his “Cool Roof” and “Edible Gardens” programs, both set to begin next year, said spokeswoman Joanna Doven.
The city will recruit volunteers to coat the roofs of 10 city-owned buildings with white reflective paint, which it hopes will reduce inside temperatures by up to 30 percent and cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 50 tons, Doven said. Volunteers will receive safety training and assistance from Department of Public Works personnel.
Painting will be done over the course of eight months. Doven said the city has not yet decided which buildings to paint, but they will include police stations, recreation centers and senior centers.
“It will not only make us greener, but it will also help us to reduce our energy costs, which will save taxpayer dollars,” Doven said.