"Leigh Peterson has one of the coolest roofs in Baltimore. Her rowhouse near Patterson Park sports a blinding white cap, topped by a row of shiny solar panels."

"Peterson, 29, a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, doesn't need to see her roof to know it's cool, though. She just has to count the dollars she's saved on air conditioning. She got her roof coated as part of a comprehensive energy retrofit of her 109-year-old house, and her August electricity bill was about half what she paid last year.

'I'm a grad student, so I'm always into saving money, because I don't have much of it,' she said. 'But I'm also environmentally concerned as well.'"

Timothy B. Wheeler reports for the Baltimore Sun October 14, 2013. [2]