Here are a few photos from our trip to the Cal Academy of Sciences. One of our favorite features of the museum is its living rooftop, which is home to 1.7 million native plants.

Typical black tar roofs tend to trap heat and add to what is known as the urban heat island effect. The Academy’s green rooftop keeps the building’s interior an average of 10° cooler than a standard roof would (which really helps with energy costs – one-sixth of all electricity consumed in the U.S. goes to cool buildings).

The rooftop reminded us of a recent video we shot about cool pavement technology that is being developed at Berkeley Lab to help counteract the heat island effect in our cities.

Watch the full video here →