oa Investigating Energy In Building

The Arab States of the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) are rapidly developing and facing an increasing human population with certain insufficiencies in water and energy. They have also developed very high per capita energy consumption rates depending on fossil fuel that requires per contra a real contribution to minimize carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution. Patterns of energy use in buildings vary from one region to another. In the GCC, high energy consuming air conditioners, as well as a lack of thermal insulation in buildings together with low energy prices have led to high per capita energy consumption rates, leaving Qatar, with 55.4 tones' of carbon dioxide per person, has the highest footprint globally (about 10 times the global average) in the region. Qatar is followed by Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain, which are ranked third, fourth and fifth in the world. It is known that available technologies could reduce projected energy use in buildings 41% by 2050, thereby avoiding 11.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2, or roughly 40% of current global fossil CO2 emissions, according to one estimation of International Energy Agency (IEA 2009a). Pacific Controls - an instruments firm Dubai-based, found that energy use in buildings can be cut by a collective 20 percent through certain energy conservation concerning insulation, efficient windows and appliances, shading, reflective roofing, and a host of automated controls that adjust energy use. The United States Green Building Council estimates that green building, on average reduces energy use by 30 percent, and carbon emissions by 35 percent. The public facility building considered in this work was chosen as a model for energy assessment/audit to define the saving potentials based on several performance indices that are defined to compare the energy and environmental performance. Various assessment, monitoring and optimization methods where applied to conclude that energy saving of approximately 55% of the currently energy use is possible.