Abstract:
The untidy urban growth and the little concern with the use and occupation of the soil, allied to
problems such as the heat islands, damage the quality of life of Brazilian citizens. In the XXI
century, the use of techniques that are less aggressive to the environment for sustainable
development becomes more prevalent. The green roof has been used and disseminated more
and more because it is a structure that uses vegetation in its composition and is pointed out by
several authors as beneficial to the environment. Also, its use appears as an alternative to reduce
the ambient temperature and a tool to achieve thermal comfort. Due to climatic changes, the
demand for artificial conditioning, with the intuition of maintaining thermal comfort, tends to
be more and more usual and growing. In recent years, the São Paulo macro-metropolis has
suffered from the water and energy crisis, which has increased the interest in plans that will
mitigate these problems. In order to minimize this water and energy situation, the work
evaluates the energy savings that could be achieved with the green roof in every roof area of
the households available in the city of São Paulo. The savings come from the thermal comfort
generated by such vegetated cover and the non-use of equipment for cooling and heating the
internal environment. It was found in an intermediate scenario and from the applied
methodology that it is possible to save in one year with air conditioning of the reverse type in
electricity to the order of 2434 TW with heating and 303 TW with cooling to maintain the
internal environment at constant temperature 24ºC, equivalent to 5.70 and 0.71 meters of the
saved water column, respectively. Considering an average area of 750 km² of the Itumbiara
reservoir, it is clear that the volume of water collected is significant.