Bandung, West Java, Indonesia (winner's site of the Million Cool Roofs Challenge)
#00189
Case study of
#00007 Convert dark roofs and pavement to reflective, high-albedo surfaces
Implementer
Million Cool Roofs Challenge (10 grantee teams across 10 countries); winner Cool Roofs Indonesia led by Beta Paramita, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
Timeline
Since Jan 1, 2019
Location
Description
The Million Cool Roofs Challenge (2019–2022) awarded 125,000 USD grants to 10 teams across 10 countries to scale reflective roof coatings, funded by the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (Clean Cooling Collaborative) with a 2,000,000 USD total philanthropic budget. Collectively the teams coated approximately 1.1 million m², roughly 250,000 small roofs, against a headline target of 1 million roofs — partially missed due to COVID disruption. The winning team, Cool Roofs Indonesia (Beta Paramita, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia), coated 70 buildings across 15 cities with measured indoor temperature reductions of at least 2°C. Durable institutional outcomes included passive-cooling provisions in Kenya's building code, cool-roof specifications for Indonesian low-income housing programmes, and local paint testing capacity that outlives the grant period.
Metrics
3Funding
Lessons learned
- Headline deployment targets can be missed while durable wins are institutional: building codes, housing specifications, and local testing capacity outlast grant-funded painting cycles.
- A competitive prize structure with small grants (125,000 USD each) produced outsized institutional change per dollar compared to larger, non-competitive grants.
- Measure indoor temperature reductions alongside area coated; the winner's documented ≥2°C reductions provided the evidence base needed to influence housing specifications.
- Multi-country, volunteer-dependent deployment is vulnerable to external shocks (COVID); designing for institutional outcomes rather than physical targets alone provides shock resilience.
Documented Jul 24, 2026