A bird’s eye view of the skies above Basel, Copenhagen, and Paris will reveal – aside from the spectacular views – rooftops that lately have been blooming with an abundance of greenery.
These rooftops adorned with vegetables and other vegetation are known as green roofs and have become mandatory for new and freshly renovated spaces in these European cities.
However, the systems are expensive to construct, maintain, and repair, and the price of installation alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Israeli startup Bing Klima has developed an all-in-one green roofing system that it claims practically pays for itself – topping slate, shingle, and tile with solar panels whose generated energy can offset the owner’s electricity bills or be sold to the electric grid operators.
These green roofs also benefit the inhabitants of the metropolis below by countering rising temperatures, preventing floods, and even providing free produce. “Urban areas and cities are getting affected by climate change more and more,” Oded Shamir, co-founder of Bing Klima, tells NoCamels.
Bing Klima uses agrivoltaics, a technique that uses the same area of land to both generate solar energy and grow crops, which is normally deployed in large agricultural fields. The company has produced an entire green roofing system within a single patented module, making it possible to use this method on much smaller areas like rooftops. Each unit contains a solar panel, a hydroponic growing system, and a water tank, which both irrigates and anchors the entire module to the roof.
Read the entire article at NoCamels