The notions of sustainable design and energy efficiency first entered global consciousness following the energy shortages of the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by ideas of energy independence, many designers in Europe and North America sought ideas and strategies that could help create energy-efficient buildings and cities. As they searched for design solutions, some researched the environmentally responsive elements of traditional architecture, while others developed new solutions that employ modern technologies and high performance materials.

As the energy crisis subsided, the building industry in North America returned to business as usual, allowing its European counterpart – which emphasized technological solutions – to take a lead. But with the revival of global interest in sustainability – this time driven by both environmental and energy concerns – the dormant dialogue between the two approaches to sustainable design returned to play a role in shaping the global sustainability agenda. Oscillating between advocates of passive design and proponents of technological solutions, this dialogue continues to enrich the discourse on the future of sustainable design and development

National Commercial Bank in Jeddah (left). consists of a triangular 27-storey office tower juxtaposed with a six-storey, 400-car circular garage. The verticality of the bank tower is interrupted by three triangular courtyards ‘chiseled’ into the building's facade. The office windows are oriented towards these courtyards with an inward orientation typical of Islamic traditional design. This provides the interiors with daylight but prevents them from overheating. Copyrights: Wolgfang Hoyt/Esto. Shaded pathways within Masdar Institute for Science and Technology (right) Copyrights: Nigel Young

Regional Drivers of Sustainability: Past and Present

In the Middle East however, this dialogue took on a form that reflected the region’s climatic and socio-economic context. Like other hot and dry climates, many parts of the Middle East have a heritage of traditional architecture that featured environmentally responsive cooling strategies, a heritage that was largely ignored during the region’s colonial period. As the region transitioned into independent nation states, its post-colonial period was characterized by a strong sense of national identity and an urgent need for nation building. But this desire for development

was undermined by the lack of local industrial and technological bases. In this challenging socio-economic context, the limited discourse on sustainable design inevitably adopted the notion of appropriate technology – a common notion at the time which suggested modern complex technologies should not be used if simpler technologies would suffice – and saw traditional architecture as an essential source of inspiration.

As notions of climate change and sustainability became part of global discourse in the 1990s, they slowly found their way to the region’s national agendas. But the current forces behind the region’s sustainability agendas are different from those of the post- colonial period and are also distinct from the European and North American forces which emphasize the need to reduce carbon emissions and conserve resources while maintaing economic development and human welfare.

Instead, the education, discourse and practice of sustainability in the Middle East are driven by a convergence of pressing issues that collectively demand a more efficient and sustainable use of resources. These drivers are: high domestic energy use, diminishing water resources, a desire to demonstrate environmental stewardship and commercial development pressures. Prime amongst these forces is domestic energy use. While the region historically enjoyed an abundance of cheap subsidized energy – especially in resource-rich countries – the rapid growth of its urban centers and its domestic consumption has resulted in increasing strains on its economies and energy infrastructures. Saudi Arabia, for example is estimated to use a third of its oil production to satisfy domestic energy needs, a ratio that is expected to rise to approximately 50% by 2030, if growing consumption patterns do not change. These rising, and even wasteful, consumption patterns are also compounded with the prospects of a peak in oil production and a strong public resistance to any reduction in energy subsidies. Thus, faced with limited policy options to reverse the consumption patterns that their subsidies have created and to avoid long term economic crises, regional policy-makers turned to energy use in buildings, given its high cost-effectiveness, and encouraged energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings.

Equally important to energy use is water scarcity. While the region has the lowest renewable freshwater resources per capita and many of its countries rely on non-renewable aquifers or on energy-intensive desalination for their water supply, its wasteful water consumption patterns do not reflect this scarcity or the high cost of desalination. Egypt for example – which for decades enjoyed the use of two thirds of the Nile’s water – is expected to face water shortages by 2017. Abu Dhabi on the other hand, which has almost no fresh water resources, uses more than half of its domestic energy consumption in water desalination. As water crises looms, Middle East nations are beginning to reconsider their water consumption patterns.

The desire to demonstrate environmental stewardship by some governments and organizations comes next as a driver for sustainable design in the region. Governments seeking to diversify their economies, encourage sustainable development, or even gain political legitimacy, are increasingly embarking on large scale projects that adopt sustainable design. Similarly, commercially-driven developers keen on competing in the global market are increasingly experimenting with buildings that can be marketed as being green.

As might be expected, as the regional impetus for sustainability changed over the years, the dominant approaches to sustainable design have also changed to reflect this impetus. This resulted in the development of three approaches to sustainable design in the region: a revivalist approach, a progressive approach, and a hybrid approach.

Lycee Charles de Gaulle, Damascus, comprises two rows of plastered white buildings, each with two floors of classrooms. Movable awnings shade the open spaces between the buildings. The external walls consist of two leaves with an air cavity in between, designed to exploit the thermal storage capacity of the construction. The roofs are also made up of multiple leaves and are aerated, in order to avoid overheating of the rooms. The architects decided against mechanical ventilation of the classrooms. Instead the solar chimneys generate a thermal lift which ‘sucks’ the exhaust air out of the classrooms. Cool intake air ventilates through the windows in the ground floor rooms, and through miniature earth ducts. At night the cool external air circulates through the classrooms, reducing the internal temperatures in preparation for the next day. Copyrights: Adrià Goula Sardà

The Revivalist Approach

As noted above, the initial discourse and practice of sustainable design in the Middle East revolved around strategies, techniques, and elements adopted from traditional architecture.
This revivalist approach to sustainable design dominated the architectural discourse in education and practice and for many years appropriated all notions of sustainable and energy-efficient design.

Much of this revivalist dominance is attributed to the work of the late Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy (1900-1989). Fathy – together with his disciples – developed an approach to sustainable design which relied on the use of local, low-impact materials and traditional environmentally-responsive design strategies such as shading, natural ventilation, evaporative cooling, thermal mass and microclimatic elements (such as courtyards). As a result of their work – and in spite of the disparity in their focus on energy efficiency and their ability to apply these strategies successfully – they were collectively credited with reviving long forgotten traditional knowledge.

Their approach to energy-efficient design, however, was characterized with a number of flaws that proved detrimental to their success. These flaws include the formulaic use of traditional design elements; an exclusive use of appropriate technology that bordered on rejection of modern technology; a prescriptive use of low comfort levels; and a ‘master architect’ approach to design that failed to seek essential interdisciplinary collaboration. Thus, in spite of the revivalists’ claims that their designs were as environmentally-responsive as traditional architecture – and are therefore inherently energy efficient, the performance of their built projects – such as the New Bariz Village Market in Egypt’s western desert and the Kafr Elgouna Resort in Hurghada – failed to live up to the ideals they espoused. So with the advent of the global sustainability movement, the role of the revivalists in practice diminished, giving way to the emergence of two new approaches, a progressive approach and a hybrid approach.

The progressive approach

Practitioners of the progressive approach seek to use the latest technologies to achieve energy-efficient buildings, a design approach that is diametrically opposite to the revivalist approach.

Progressives appear to be more concerned with technology transfer than appropriate technology and have almost no interest in lessons learned from local traditional design. To achieve their energy targets, their designs rely on shading and technologies such as high-performance glazing, efficient cooling systems, and integrated renewable energy system. As such, they are largely dependent on foreign industrial bases to supply solutions for local and regional design challenges. Their subscription to narrow comfort standards has also minimized their passive design options by encouraging ‘sealed-envelope’ designs and by excluding strategies such as natural ventilation.

A limited number of buildings that belong to this approach emerged over the last 20 years around the Gulf region. Most prominent amongst which is the World Trade Center tower in Bahrain (by Atkins), which incorporates three large wind turbines, and the Al Faisaliah Tower in Riyadh (by Foster and Partners), which features high performance facades and complex and efficient cooling systems. Affiliated with this approach is also the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah (by SOM) and the plethora of unbuilt schemes that emerged in the years preceding the recent economic downturn. These unbuilt schemes, such as the DIFC Lighthouse Tower (by Atkins) and Burj Al-Taqa in Dubai (by Gerber Architekten), have all promised great energy performance through a mix of efficient cooling and lighting systems, and on-site renewable energy generation. The emergence of this approach coincided with a predominant lack of understanding of sustainable design amongst local design professionals. This lack of sustainability knowledge prevented them from taking a leading role in the design process in spite of their local knowledge, which created a vacuum for foreign – and especially European – designers to fill. As a result, projects that belong to this approach often appeared to emulate the European approach to energy-efficient design. Not only do their designs emphasize building envelope and efficient active systems, but they also appear to adopt design strategies such as extensive glazing that were developed for colder climates and even subscribe to European high-tech aesthetics.

This imported nature of the progressive approach raises concerns not only regarding its appropriateness to the region’s climate, but also regarding the general sustainability of reliance on imported technologies and the practicality of maintaining imported systems.

The Hybrid Approach

As its name indicates, the hybrid approach represents an attempt to combine the revivalist and progressive approaches. As a fairly new approach that first appeared in the early years of the twenty first century in the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, it promises to be the most balanced of all three approaches. Its advocates claim to combine principles learned from traditional architecture with modern technologies to reduce the environmental impact of development while maintaining acceptable comfort levels. Practitioners of the hybrid approach often combine the use of passive ventilation and cooling strategies with the need to maintain thermal comfort throughout the year.
Buildings that belong to this category, for example, balance the use of shading and thermal mass with envelope insulation, and balance natural ventilation – using elements such as wind towers and solar chimneys – with the use of efficient cooling systems, as is the case in the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (by HOK), the new campus of the American University in Cairo (by Community Design Collaborative, Sasaki, and others) and the Masdar Institute for Science and Technology (by Foster and Partners). Water use has also been given its due attention in this approach with water conservation measures becoming an integral part of its design strategies.

Advocates of this approach are also distinct in their attitude towards of the role of renewable energy in design. Unlike the revivalists, who generally steer away from renewables, and the progressives, who often place renewables at the heart of their sustainability strategies, the hybrid approach practitioners have adopted a balanced approach towards renewables. Armed with the now-common knowledge of the relative cost effectiveness of energy efficiency measures, they consider renewables as a last resort measure to be used after exhausting the use of passive design strategies and efficient active systems.

Such notions of combining passive strategies with efficient systems and renewables and using adaptive comfort models may suggest that this approach merely represents a local manifestation of the direction in which global sustainable design is currently heading. However, the local design solutions produced by this approach in response to its climate and socio-economic context asserts its distinctly regional nature. In addition, the hybrid nature of this approach has often necessitated a collaboration between local and foreign designers to combine local knowledge with global expertise. This dialogue occasionally facilitates knowledge transfer and supports the development of a generation of local design professionals that understand sustainable design in their local context.

Sustainability Diagram of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology near Jeddah showing 1. High performance roof 2. Solar tower 3. Passive ventilation 4. High performance glazing 5. Integrated shading 6. Local evaporation 7. Passively cooled courtyards 8. Filtered daylight. KAUST is s the largest certified LEED Platinum building complex worldwide. The buildings, which stand in close proximity next to one another, share a common roof, shading each other while also providing shade to the open spaces between the buildings. Two wind towers use solar radia- tion to improve the air circulation in the circulation spines between the buildings. A photovoltaic and a solar thermal facility on the roofs provides nearly 8 % of the energy required by the university. A further 70% of energy is covered by green electricity. Copyrights: HOK

The Regional Players

As varied as the approaches to sustainability are, as is the nature of the stakeholders pushing its agenda forward. This variety in players reflects the political and socio-economic realities of the countries in which they operate. In countries where there is a relatively strong civil society such as Jordan and Lebanon, sustainability has been championed by NGOs and professional associations, who work at grassroots level to create awareness, build organizations such as green building councils and empower professionals through education. In countries with strong central bureaucracies, on the other hand, players tend to emerge from within the government’s research and educational institutions. Egypt represents a prime example of this category, where its green building council forms part of a government body and its efforts to promote sustainability focus on developing policy and enforcement measure such as energy efficiency standards and rating systems.

Between these two extremes lies a variety of conditions. These conditions include professionals establishing green building councils in parallel to governmental efforts to develop energy codes, as is the case in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. They also include combinations of government-backed and commercially-backed organizations as is the case in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

In the Qatari case, the government funded Green Building Council acts as an advocate for sustainability while the commercially-funded, Gulf Organization for Research and Development develops and promotes a green building rating system. Similarly, the Estidama initiative in Abu Dhabi was created by the municipal Urban Planning Council to develop sustainable design guides and a mandatory rating system. Simultaneously, the government supported the creation of commercial entities such as the Masdar Initiative, which acts as a catalyst for sustainable development through its investments in renewable energy and pilot projects. These pilot projects include the master plan for Masdar City and a number of key buildings planned for its centre.

But while the government-backed Masdar Initiative is a regional leader, it is certainly not alone in investing in sustainable design. In recent years, several institutions have invested in creating excellent examples of sustainable design. These examples include higher education campuses such a the American university in Cairo, the American University in Beirut and the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology. They also include schools such as Lycée Charles De Gaulle in Damascus and a small number of civic buildings, residential developments and private residences.

While the list above may suggest that sustainable design has spread into many sectors around the region, it also suggests that its manifestations remain limited not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively to high profile clients for whom financial return is not the only concern. This is evident in the lack of examples from profit-driven developments such as commercial offices and hospitality facilities, or from cost sensitive projects such as medium to low cost housing.

Notwithstanding the recent interest in social sustainability around the Middle East and despite research efforts to combine sustainable design with low cost housing in Egypt, not one project has yet emerged that addresses large scale housing or successfully integrates sustainable design within a local economic and social sustainability agenda. These observations raise questions on the viability of sustainable design in the region and suggests that there are challenges preventing it from becoming part of mainstream industry and design practice.

Regional Challenges

As one might expect, the region’s environmental challenges are at the top of this list of challenges. Since moderating indoor environments effectively in this challenging climate requires a substantial reduction in heat and solar gain and an optimization of cooling, sustainable design here often requires a combination of passive and active cooling strategies to achieve acceptable comfort levels. This combination often creates ‘radical’ designs that pose additional programmatic and cost challenges, and occasionally produce design forms that are unwelcome by some developers and occupants in the region. Integrating a mixed- mode ventilation and cooling strategy, for example, has associated capital costs that might not be appropriate for every project’s funding model. Similarly, while it is an established fact that in order to reduce solar heat gain it is preferable to limit the use of glazing, many developers and occupants are unwilling to accept any design form that does not feature excessive glazing. As a result, it has become common for design teams to abandon their ambitious sustainability aspirations during the design process, occasionally resigning themselves to the use of standard mechanical systems.

There are also economical challenges to sustainable design, with energy subsidies that act as a disincentive for energy efficiency and a construction industry that is reluctant to adopt sustainability standards due to its concerns about supply chain changes and increased capital costs. Challenges also exist within the design process. Confusion amongst local designers on which sustainable design approach to adopt, coupled with a lack of region-specific knowledge in architecture education, and consequently amongst local design professionals, has prevented local designers from taking a leading role in the sustainable design process.
But while these challenges may appear daunting, the varied efforts taking place in the region may indicate that the tide is turning – albeit slowly – towards sustainable design in the Middle East. An increasing collaboration with foreign architects, coupled with a recent interest in sustainable design amongst young professionals, indicate that knowledge-related challenges are likely to be overcome in the short to medium term.

Similarly, as the region continues developing the hybrid approach to design, and as its industry continues streamlining its practices, adopting energy efficiency standards and creating new supply chains for sustainable materials, additional capital costs are likely to diminish, paving the way for the savings from reduced energy and water use to act as financial incentives. Finally, as the region’s current state of political flux stabilizes, it is hoped that its states would finds their steps towards sustainable development policy, accelerating the pace of change, and ultimately creating cleaner and greener cities for the region and a more sustainable future for its people.

Karim Elgendy is an architect and a sustainable design consultant based in London. He can be contacted at: Karim [at] Carboun [dot] com . This article was originally published in the English and German editions of DETAIL Green magazine , Issue 2-2011, under the title ‘Sustainability in the Desert’

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Recognised as one of the world’s largest oil producers, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, holds 94% of the country’s proven oil reserves and 90% of its natural gas, making it the wealthiest of the seven emirates in the federation. In recent years, and despite the recent economic downturn, Abu Dhabi maintained a steady pace of development that was accompanied with steady increases in energy demand and consumption.

This growth of energy demand and consumption has been as result of a number factors. Prime amongst which is economic growth and the demographic pressures of a growing population. But equally important to these factors are the heavy subsidies on the domestic energy market, which encourages overconsumption, and the heavy subsidies on domestic water use, which play a major factor in the growth of energy use in Abu Dhabi.

Energy Cost of Desalination

With very limited renewable water resources of its own, the UAE government has turned to desalination, an energy- intensive process that uses electricity or steam to remove dissolved solids from sea-water to produce water suitable for human consumption and agricultural use.  The United Arab Emirate has the third largest capacity of desalination behind Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Yet while most desalination plants in the UAE are combined with power plants for higher efficiency  – combining reverse osmosis units with the thermal distillation process that uses steam to drive the turbine and generate electricity – the relative size of the desalination operations presents an energy challenge for the future.  In a recent interview, the Abu Dhabi Water and Energy Company (ADWEC) confirmed that 3%-3.5% of total electricity produced in the emirate goes towards desalination, with every 1 million imperial gallon (MIG) of desalinated water produced per day requiring 1MW of power. With the UAE’s water consumption expected to increase at 5% annually, so will the need to increase desalination capacity and the amount of energy consumed.

A future Energy Crisis for a Major Oil Producer

Despite the UAE holding the world’s fifth-largest gas reserves at 6.4 trillion cubic meters (Tcm), with Abu Dhabi alone being home to 5.62 Tcm, Abu Dhabi would not be able to provide enough natural gas to meet the 7%-10% yearly growth in electricity demand continuing up to 2020 (According to ADWEC Global Peak Electricity Demand Forecast for 2010-2020). As illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, the emirate has reached a point where consumption and demand for natural gas has exceeded production and continue to increase.

Figure 1, UAE Natural Gas Production and Consumption, Source: BP, 2011

Figure 2, UAE Natural Gas Production and Demand 2000-2020, Source: Dargin, 2010

Thus while there might be ‘enough resources to meet future demand’  in terms of oil (OPEC’s 2011 World Oil Outlook), Gulf countries including the UAE appear to be facing their own ‘energy crisis’ due to their dependence on natural gas as the primary fuel for electricity generation. According to 2008 estimates, natural gas accounts for 98% of the fuel feedstock for electricity generation in the UAE with the remaining 2% covered by oil (figure 3).

Figure 3, Total electricity production by generation type 1972-2008, Source: IEA, 2010

Generating Electricity in Abu Dhabi

According to the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company (ADWEC), electricity is predominantly generated in Abu Dhabi using gas turbines, steam turbines as part of the combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT), and diesel engines (although the use of the latter has become minimal over the years).  In order to power the turbines, Abu Dhabi receives its natural gas from two sources: The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC); and Dolphin Energy Limited of Abu Dhabi.  ADNOC is a government owned oil and gas company that is responsible for managing and overseeing the production of 2.7 million barrels of oil nationally a day, while Dolphin Energy, an Abu Dhabi financed gas production company, produces and processes non associated natural gas from Qatar’s offshore North Field, transporting the gas via a subsea pipeline to Abu Dhabi.

In terms of fuel provision for generation, ADWEC is responsible for purchasing fuel gas from ADNOC and Dolphin Energy, paying the full economic cost of gas on behalf of the Independent Water and Power Producers (IWPPs) and the Power and Water Producers (PWPs).  ADWEC also oversees any financial settlements as well as supplying the power generators with gas for the turbines.  The fact that ADWEC pays for the fuel gas does not create any financial incentive for the power generators to consider efficiency measures or to consider alternative sources of energy that might reduce their fuel costs.

ADWEC has forecasted that Abu Dhabi alone will need to meet 28,188MW of electricity demand by 2020, yet, according to a statement by the Policy of the United Arab Emirates on the Evaluation and Potential Development of Peaceful Nuclear Energy,“…known volumes of natural gas that could be made available to the nation’s electricity sector would be insufficient to meet future demand, providing adequate fuel for only 20,000-25,000 MW’s of power generation capacity by 2020”. This means that a mere 71%-89% of electricity demand can be met, and that  unless natural gas use is managed or alternative electricity production options are developed, Abu Dhabi could experience the same electricity shortages experienced by Sharjah in the Northern Emirates.

It was also suggested by ADWEC that recent gas shortages in Abu Dhabi have also increased the consumption of oil sold locally at the world oil price; a direction which the government would choose to avoid due to its high marginal cost and its impact on increasing the price of electricity. The government stands to benefit more to conserve oil for export rather than making a loss to meet local power generation needs, and to reinvest the petrodollars into developing the city’s trade, finance, industry, and infrastructure.

Having recognized these concerns, the Abu Dhabi government has recently begun taking steps to diversify its economy and energy mix from a sole dependency on fossil fuels, and to create a market and an industry for renewable energy that will create opportunities for technology transfer as well as job creation.

Understanding the Subsidy

As suggested above, the price of electricity in Abu Dhabi is a major contributing factor to its unsustainable consumption. Electricity is sold to consumers at a heavily-subsidized standard tariff, that is much lower than the total economic costs of electricity. Consumers are charged a subsidized unit rate per kilowatt hour (kWh) that is constant all year round, with domestic Emirati nationals and farms receiving the most generous energy subsidies. Current tariffs paid by Emirati and non-Emirati consumers can be seen in table 1, with lower tariffs implying that a higher subsidy is applied.

Table 1, ADWEA Electricity Tariffs for Final Customers, Source: RSB 2011

Further examination of the data published by the Regulatory and Supervision Bureau (RSB) on electricity use during the hot summer period, shows that if the subsidies were removed, the cost of electricity would increase by nearly 40% for expatriates and 80% for local Emiratis, as shown in tables 2 and 3.

Table 2, Price of electricity Actual vs Subsidized for Expatriate households. Source RSB, 2011

Table 3, Price of electricity Actual vs Subsidized for Emirati households, Source RSB, 2011

Supply and Demand Management

The impact of this released data – which is part of an awareness campaign – on consumer behavior towards a more efficient use of energy and water is yet to be seen. Yet it represents one part of a coordinated educational campaign for public awareness, which includes initiatives such as Heroes of the UAE which aims to make the UAE population more energy conscious.

In addition, the Abu Dhabi government has taken other proactive measures to drive supply-side management and to support the efficient use of electricity, as part of the long-term Abu Dhabi 2030 Plan. The Estidama program, which includes energy efficient building codes and a semi-mandatory green building rating system, represents a major effort to reduce building’s demand for cooling, heating, and lighting by encouraging more efficient designs. The government is also implementing a national requirement for energy labeling of appliances.

Encouraging consumers to use energy more efficiently through such programs, coupled with encouraging sustainable and efficient buildings through Estidama’s Pearls certification, will utimately pave the way for a more energy conscious and sustainable society.

Lara El Saad is an MSc graduate from Imperial College London, specializing in Energy Policy.  Lara currently resides in the UAE and carries five years of energy industry experience.

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During the 1990s and the early 2000s, the UAE, and the city of Dubai in particular, witnessed a rapid rate of growth in its built environment driven by a real estate bubble. In the span of a few years the city’s unprecedented rate of growth, which was driven by both demand and speculation, completely transformed the city. But such growth came at a price.  Driven by their need for quick returns, developers cared little beyond delivering a building on time and on schedule. Speed of construction often came at the expense of quality, and issues of performance and energy use played almost no role in the design and construction processes. Common disregard of performance was also fueled by the fact that most buildings were commissioned for developers – rather than owner/occupier clients – since their focus lied solely on reducing initial capital expenditures without considering operating costs that are typically borne by tenants.

Figure 1. Photo of the Masdar Institute Courtyard showing the wind tower, and the layered facades of residential units. Copyrights: Nigel Young/ Foster+Partners

These commercial forces, coupled with relatively cheap electricity across the UAE, and a lack of demanding building regulations have paved the way to the development of unsustainable design practices over the last decade. A typical office building in the UAE today is a predominantly glazed high rise tower. Basic design decisions such as orientation, massing, and envelope design are usually made without much regard to their impacts on the buildings’ energy performance, and passive cooling strategies are rarely considered.

Figure 2: Electricity demand in the UAE over the last 30 years. Source: Energy Information Administration (EIA). Copyrights: Carboun

Taking notice of the rapid growth in its total electricity consumption and the role of the built environment in this growth, the UAE soon realized that its current growth trends are not sustainable. The UAE’s electricity demand has doubled over the last decade from 35 billion kWh to over 70 billion kWh, which represents a hugh increase in per capita energy use when compared to a population increase of approximately 60% over the same period. The UAE’s built environment plays a major role in this growth in per capita consumption, with up to 60% of its electricity consumption used in cooling buildings during the hottest day of the year. With more inefficient buildings due to join the existing building stock in the near future, this exponential growth presents an undeniable challenge.

Traditional Precedents

Figures 3a and 3b: Pictures from the Bastakiya district in Dubai (founded in 1910)

But the UAE’s own architectural heritage may present an alternative approach to this alarming trend. Presenting a traditional precedent in cooling local indoor spaces since the 19^th century, traditional design provides lessons in passive cooling that can be implemented in today’s designs.

Passive Cooling

This article argues that if the UAE hopes to control its ever-increasing demand for electricity, its policy-makers should start regulating the building industry’s energy use while introducing mandatory building codes that incorporate passive cooling.

Passive cooling essentially aims at naturally attaining and sustaining a cool indoor environment. It reduces the dependence on energy-intensive mechanical cooling which saves capital expenditure, reduces energy costs, and improves indoor air quality. Studies by the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council have demonstrated that incorporating simple and sensible passive cooling strategies into the design of the built environment can result in as much as 25% reduction in heat gain, which translates into significant savings in cooling electricity consumption.

Passive cooling strategies can generally be classified into two main categories, the first of which aims at minimizing a building’s need for cooling while the second utilizes wind and heat to actually cool and ventilate its spaces.

Orientation, Massing, and Shading

The single most sensible and simple design decision that can drastically reduce a building cooling demand and performance is its orientation. Climatic data suggest that buildings in the UAE receive the highest levels of solar heat gains on their eastern and western walls in the summer and on their southern walls in the winter. Thus, it is generally recommended that buildings are designed to be oriented on the east-west axis, with any glazing on the north and south sides complemented with appropriate shading and glare control. Microclimatic wind patterns must also be studied as they might inform a slight change of orientation to benefit from air cooling effects.

Massing of buildings should also be seen in their urban context. High rise buildings of similar heights should be avoided as they limit air movement. On the other hand, combining buildings with varying heights and with long facades permits air movement, which results in better ventilation and reduced heat gains.

Shading is another important aspect in the UAE considering the high heat gains experienced by its buildings. Shading can be achieved through a variety of strategies including self shading, building clustering, overhangs on windows, planting large trees, and shading features. Operable shading devices offer the flexibility of adjusting shading blades or shutters to allow ventilation and daylighting into interior spaces without admitting direct heat gain.

High Performance Envelope and Thermal Insulation

In a typical house in the UAE, 30% of heat gain occurs through its roof and almost 30%  through its walls. So another effective passive cooling technique is to provide high thermal insulation on the building envelope. By preventing heat from entering the building, any cooling attained by mechanical or natural conditioning can be retained.

To reduce heat gain, high insulating building materials must be used appropriately around the building envelope. The effectiveness of insulation of certain envelope elements can be assessed using their U-value (which represents  the amount of heat radiation (W) that can enter the building per meter square of area and at a temperature deferential of one degree). Well insulated walls, roofs and floors should have a U-value of 0.35 at most.

As mentioned above, traditional architecture in the UAE benefited from high thermal mass materials, which not only insulated against increases in outside temperature but also reduced solar heat gain.

Heat gain through windows – which constitutes 40% of heat gain – can be controlled by reducing the ratio of glazing to the building facades and by using glazing with low Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC), which represents the ratio of heat that enters the indoor to the heat that reaches the window. The use of high performance double glazing, for example, yields a SHGC of 0.22.

Natural Ventilation

There are many ways in which buildings can utilize natural ventilation to provide an acceptable level of thermal comfort. Orientation is an important factor in allowing cross ventilation by providing access to predominant wind directions.

But where the context do not allow cross ventilation, innovative solutions such as wind towers or solar chimneys can allow natural ventilation. For example, using solar chimneys in combination with a cooling cavity, cools outdoor air as it enters the space, while rejecting warm air through the solar chimney. A similar system was tested successfully by Professor Mohsen Aboulnaga in the city of Al Ain in 1998, where air flow rates achieved were sufficient to provide thermal comfort to occupants.

Improved Building Pressurization

Reducing air leaks through a building can also have a remarkably large impact on its cooling needs. Warm air tends to leak through poorly sealed building envelopes, which increases heat gain and the need for mechanical cooling. With this issue recently coming to the fore, greater importance is now placed on ensuring that buildings are properly pressurized and that air leakages are controlled. A target leakage rate is below 3.64 l/s/m², a unit which represents the amount of liters of air that leaking though the building per second per square meter of area.

The Use of Passive Design in the Masdar Institute

Perhaps the most ambitious project to employ passive strategies in the UAE is the Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute for Science and Technology (MIST). As the first building to be constructed in Masdar City, The Masdar Institute  seeks to provide a local example on how passive design can help reduce energy demand, and thus help achieve the city’s zero energy targets.The first phase of the Masdar Institute, which has been fully operational since 2010, features 6 buildings that achieved a 50% reduction in cooling demand compared to an average UAE building.

To achieve this remarkable reduction in cooling demand, its designers incorporated several innovative passive design strategies, most of which were inspired by elements from traditional architecture of the Emirates. The most notable feature of these strategies is a 45m structure that provides cool breezes to the central courtyard (Figures 1,4). This contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional wind tower operates according to the same principles of the wind towers built in the Bastakia area of Dubai and elsewhere around the region, albeit in a more active manner. While the traditional wind towers opened to all four directions, this wind tower is equipped with sensors that will operate its top louvers to open in the direction of the current prevailing winds, thus insuring maximum efficiency.

Figure 4. The operation mechanism of this modern wind tower (right), compared to that of a traditional wind tower (left). Figures adapted from “Exploring the Masdar Institute Campus”. Copyrights: Masdar

Other features of the campus design that have their roots in the traditional architectural include its narrow (6m) shaded routes and the use of high thermal mass as a storage for ‘coolth’ that is then radiated back to its surroundings when temperatures rise.

Visitors of the Masdar Institute are also drawn to the terracotta colored facades of its residential buildings (Figure 5). The wavy envelope design not only mimics the forms of desert dunes that surround the city, but its multi-layered design also serves several environmental and social functions. In addition to allowing for privacy, its outermost layer provides self shading to balconies while reducing solar heat gain in interior spaces. Its glass-reinforced concrete latticework allows for daylighting and night purge cooling, while its cantilevered design helps shade the narrow pathways below by reducing the distance between buildings further. To complement this outer layer, the envelope’s inner layer is highly reflective, highly conductive, highly insulated, and highly sealed.

Figure 5. Masdar Institute Residential Facades. Copyrights: Nigel Young/ Foster+Partners

The cost of passive design

But Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Masdar Institute and about Masdar’s general approach to developing their zero-carbon city is that it strives to achieve its energy targets in a commercially viable manner. By choosing cost effective technologies and features and rejecting those that are less scalable, Masdar can represent a true model for energy efficient development in the region. It also sends a clear message to the local construction industry that incorporating passive design strategies not only provide environmental and socioeconomic benefits, but that these strategies are scalable and will soon become part of mainstream practice. It is worth noting here that while Masdar is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mubadala, a government investment vehicle, it describes itself as a “commercially driven enterprise that operates to reach the broad boundaries of the renewable energy and sustainable technologies industry”.

With the regional building industry currently suffering from a lack of innovation, a locally-generated sustainable architecture renaissance in the UAE might be the catalyst it needs for a revival. More importantly, it might be a trigger for the development a more sustainable built environment that would play a role in confronting the global environmental challenges that face our planet. Projects such as the Masdar Institute may present an example on how this could be done.

Wissam Yassine is a Senior Sustainability Engineer at Al Habtoor Leighton Group and a Masters in Sustainability candidate at Harvard University Extension School. He can be contacted at WissamYassine [at] fas [dot] harvard [dot] com

Karim Elgendy is an architect and a sustainability consultant based in London. He can be contacted at: Karim [at] Carboun [dot] com

To discuss this article, please join Carboun’s vibrant discussion group on Linkedin. For news and updates on sustainability from around the region, join Carboun’s Facebook page or follow its Twitter feed.

Karim Elgendy

Following on Carboun’s recent article discussing the two trends of energy and carbon emissions in the Arab World. Carboun has recently released a visual guide to energy and emissions with the goal or explaining the fundamentals of energy use in the region and how it relates to carbon emissions, economic development, climate change, and renewable energy. The guide which was researched and designed by Karim Elgendy was based on raw data provided by the World Bank and the World Resources Institute. It aims to explain the regional trends in local details but within the global context. Copyrights for all infographics are reserved for Carboun. No reproduction or republishing of any infographic or part thereof without prior written consent from Carboun.

To discuss this infographic, please join Carboun’s vibrant discussion group on Linkedin. For news and updates on sustainability from around the region, join Carboun’s Facebook page or follow its Twitter feed.

Discussions on the environment in the Arab World have traditionally been limited to the negative impact of region’s fossil fuel exports on climate change. In recents years, a more regional discourse has emerged that also addressed the region’s water scarcity, rapid urbanization, environmental degradation, and the expected impact of global climate change and sea level rise on its most vulnerable regions.

Map showing emissions in countries of the arab world as percentage of global emissions. Copyrights: Carboun

However, such discussions often overlooked the region’s own energy and ecological footprints and the impact of its own energy use on climate change. In the past , such disregard may have been justified by the fact that the region had not yet experienced the kind of economic development and prevalent consumerism that was common in most of the developed world. Such justification was supported by the region’s historically low rate of energy use and carbon emissions. In fact, the Arab world which constitutes 5% of the world’s population, emits just under 5% of global carbon emissions according to World Bank data, and except for Saudi Arabia, no single Arab country is responsible for more than 1% of global emissions. The energy use of an average Arab person is still below the world average and less than half that of an average european.

Share of global emissions of selected regions and countries (left) and share of global population of the same regions and countries (right). Copyrights: Carboun

But the modesty of these figures should not mask the more complex picture of energy and emissions in the region, which reflects underlying, and more alarming, trends.

Rapidly growing consumption

While global carbon emissions per capita have only marginally increased over the last 30 years, emissions of the average Arab person have almost doubled. At current rates, it is expected that the emissions of an average Arab person will exceed the global average in the next 5 years, with no sign of a slowing down.

Such rapid growth in emissions is compounded by the fact that the energy use responsible for the region’s emissions is not particularly efficient. In fact, with the exception of subsaharan Africa, the Arab World’s economy has the lowest energy efficiency record of any region in the world. The region generates a mere $4.6 of GDP per unit of energy consumed (kg of oil equivalent), which compares poorly against energy efficient economies such as those of European Union, which creates $8.1, and Latin America, which creates $7.5. The region even compares unfavorably to the energy inefficient North American economies which generate $5.6 per unit of energy consumed.

Historical record and forecast of changes in per capita carbon emissions in the Arab world compared to the world per capita average. Copyrights: Carboun

Two Energy and Emissions trends

But an investigation of intra-regional variation in energy use and emissions suggests that the use of the term ‘average Arab person’ may not be the most pertinent in describing the region’s environmental condition.  Much of the variations in energy use and emissions in the region appear not to correspond to population sizes but rather to patterns of consumption. Saudi Arabia, for example, represents 7% of the region’s population yet is responsible for 28% of the region’s emissions. Remarkably, Saudi Arabia – with a population of 25 million – produces more carbon emissions than more populous and industrialised countries such as France of (62 million), Brazil (194 million), and Spain (45 million). Egypt on the other hand, which represents 25% of the region’s population is responsible for a mere 13% of the region’s carbon emissions.

To better understand this diverse regional picture it is more appropriate to divide the region’s states into groups representing the dominant energy, emissions, and environmental trends. In such classification two groups emerge: a resource-rich group, representing fossil-fuel exporting countries with rentier economies and high per capita oil and gas exports, and a resource-poor group, with more diverse economies and generally less resources.

The resource-rich group, which includes Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Libya, is characterized with extremely high levels energy use and carbon emissions per capita. In fact, residents of the first four countries in this group are ranked amongst the world’s top five emitters per capita, with Qatar topping the global list at a staggering rate of 12 times the global average. In comparison, emissions from the resource-poor countries, which includes Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunis, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, and the palestinian territories, tend to have much lower levels and never exceed the global average.

Part of the reason behind such a high rate of energy use and emissions in resource-rich countries is water scarcity. Countries that belong to this group share a general lack of sufficient renewable water resources within their borders, and have to depend on other non-renewable water sources in order to satisfy the needs of growing populations. In most cases, especially in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate, these countries adopted desalination of sea water as a solution to their water challenges. But given the energy-intensive nature of the desalination process, and given that these countries rely on fossil fuels as an energy source for operating desalination plants, this has only added to their energy demand and subsequently their carbon emissions. It is estimated that the emirate of Abu Dhabi uses more than half of its domestic energy use in desalination.

Subsidies as a driver for excessive consumption

In resource-rich countries, energy use is so high that it makes for an exceptionally low economic energy efficiency. Producing an average of $3.7 of GDP per unit of energy consumed, economies that belong to the resource-rich group have a low energy efficiency even when compared to the resource-poor states. As a matter of fact, the economic energy efficiency of resource-rich countries is only marginally higher than that of of sub-Saharan Africa which produces $3.3 of GDP per unit of energy. This low efficiency and increased energy use and carbon emissions cannot be explained by water desalination alone. Instead it can also be attributed to the heavy subsidies on energy prices which are common in their economies. On average, the cost of petrol in resource-rich countries is a fifth of global prices, compared to three quarters in the case of the resource-poor group. Similarly, the average cost of electricity in the resource-rich group is a mere sixth of electricity prices in the US, according to study by the Arab Union of Producers. This compares to electricity prices in resource-poor countries that are half of US prices.

Introduced as a social welfare mechanism, these energy subsidies now act as a catalyst for increased consumption, disconnecting consumers from the cost and impact of their growing consumption. It can also be argued that subsidies on petrol have encouraged a reliance on the use of private vehicles and prevented the development of viable public transportation networks, while subsidies on electricity have dis-incentivized energy efficiency measures and encouraged wasteful energy use.

In addition, subsidies on water in most of the resource-rich group have also led to increased water use in its countries. This has lead to additional demands for sea water desalination, which in turn led to an increased demand for energy. In Saudi Arabia, for example, is estimated that a third of oil production is used to satisfy domestic energy needs. This ratio has grown from 3% in 1970 and is expected to rise to 50% over the next 20 years. Such diversion of resources away form revenue-generating exports suggest that growing domestic consumption in resource-rich countries is not only bad for the environment, but it also presents a real danger to its economic development.

Impact on renewables

Furthermore, the price distortions created by these subsidies have made it harder for capital-intensive renewable energy projects to compete in these economies. In fact, renewable energy plans by resource-rich countries with low energy prices tend to be quite modest. Their average declared target for renewables by 2020 hovers over 3% of total energy generation. In comparison, resource-poor countries seem to have  higher aspirations, with the their plan targets for 2020 renewables averaging at around 16% of generation.

These energy use and emissions trends should ring alarm bells for the Middle East and especially its resource-rich nations, not least because they do not track an economic development curve. Instead, they appear to be fueled by inappropriate policy choices and uncontrolled consumption As the region remains in flux amidst the greatest reshaping it has seen in decades, it is hoped that when the dust settles that such policies are remedied for a more sustainable future for the region and the world.

For Carboun’s visual guide to energy and carbon emissions in the Arab World, please see Carboun’s latest infographic.

Karim Elgendy is an architect and a sustainable design consultant based in London. He can be contacted at: Karim [at] Carboun [dot] com

To discuss this article, please join Carboun’s vibrant discussion group on Linkedin. For news and updates on sustainability from around the region, join Carboun’s Facebook page or follow its Twitter feed.