With EPA change, what’s next for the industry?
June 2, 2022—In the works for four years, on June 1, 2022, the U.S. EPA retired the Energy Star specification for roof products. No Energy Star certified roofing products will be available after this date. A number of factors brought on the change, in particular the EPA’s belief that the existence of robust standards in the commercial sector for efficient roofs made the specification obsolete. In the residential sector, the thinking is that Energy Star is too binary a label to cover what’s become a complex process.
With no Energy Star certified roofing products available after June 1, contractors, architects, specifiers, and building owners may need help with ongoing compliance and enforcement of cool roof installations. Chemical Fabrics and Film Association – Vinyl Roofing Division wants to assure these audiences that PVC roofing remains a durable, energy-saving material – and there is still a way to document it with third-party certification.
In the absence of an Energy Star specification for roofing, the CRRC-1 Program is poised to takes its place. It also is a third-party product rating program for roofing products, this one administered by the Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC). The program has been in existence since 2002.
You can update any references to Energy Star with a reference to the CRRC-1 Program to ensure that the solar reflectance, thermal emittance, and/or solar reflectance index (SRI) values used for compliance are independently obtained, verified, and publicly accessible.
CRRC-1 ratings are based on a product’s surface radiative properties (solar reflectance and thermal emittance) and range from 0 to 1, with 1 being the most reflective or emissive. The ratings inform
on how efficient the product is at reducing building energy use, increasing occupant comfort, and mitigating the urban heat island effect.
Over 3,000 roofing products are published in the CRRC Rated Roof Products Directory, an online, publicly available database that policymakers, design professionals, building owners, and others
have relied on for years for third-party data. The directory gives consumers the ability to search for and compare roofing products that comply with code requirements, green building certifications,
and rebate programs. The ratings are also on CRRC labels found on product packaging.
For more information on the benefits of cool PVC roofing, visit https://vinylroofs.org/.
About Chemical Fabrics and Film Association – Vinyl Roofing Division
The Vinyl Roofing Division of the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association was created to educate architects, specifiers, building owners, and roofing contractors on the attributes of PVC/vinyl as a durable, reflective, heat-weldable material for single-ply roofing systems. Representing all of the leading manufacturers of thermoplastic PVC roofing systems in North America, the Division is committed to making available sound, scientifically backed information on the environmental and functional performance of energy-efficient PVC roofing membranes. https://vinylroofs.org/.
