San Antonio's cool pavement test lowered road temperatures by about 3.6°F
A study in San Antonio tested three pavement treatments to mitigate urban heat, finding that one product, SolarPave, reduced road surface temperatures by 3.6°F. However, the research noted that these surface-level cooling effects did not significantly lower the temperature of the surrounding air.
Why it matters
It provides empirical evidence on the limitations of 'cool pavement' technologies as a strategy for urban heat island mitigation.
San Antonio spent part of the summer of 2023 testing a simple idea: could changing the surface of a road make it less brutally hot? The city applied 3 different pavement treatments at selected locations and brought in researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio to measure what happened. The study covered 6 sites, with treated pavement compared with nearby untreated surfaces during several rounds of measurements in June and July. Researchers found that 1 product, SolarPave by SealMaster, consistently produced the strongest surface cooling. In afternoon measurements, the treated pavement was about 3.6°F cooler on average than the untreated comparison surface. That sounds promising, particularly in a city where summer pavement can become intensely hot, but there was an important catch: the cooling at road level did not translate into an equally clear drop in the temperature of the surrounding air.
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