Sustainability of higher educational buildings

Abstract

Despite greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions of Egypt represent nearly 1 percent of the World's GHG emissions, but according to IPCCC, Egypt is one of the nations that will be heavily affected by the impact of climate change risks. The global CO2 emissions from different sectors, buildings are forming the highest portion (about 5.5 GtCO2-eq). Electricity consumption in public buildings, including administrative, educational and health buildings (9 percent) is the 2nd largest type after residential buildings (40 percent). The electrical energy per person in Egypt has increased from 1245 kWh in 2001/2002 to 1950 kWh in 2012/2013; an increase of 57 percent. This resulted in a colossal amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Thus, improving energy performance in residential and higher education buildings will have a significant impact on the reduction of electrical energy use, improve recourses efficiency and the nation's economic growth and footprint. Energy consumption in education buildings depends, mainly on the building's activities, time of use and influx of visitors and students and academic staff as well as the academic terms whether in winter summer. Retrofitting measures are important to reduce energy consumption in higher educational buildings and cooling requirements in hot climate. One of the most important measures in the retrofitting process of the building envelop, including its roof are mainly glazing type and characteristics, and walls’ thermal insulation. This paper addresses sustainability measures of the Faculty of Engineering Campus – Department of Architectural Engineering building at Cairo University, Egypt. The objective is to set the baseline assessment of the building’ energy use and compared it with its energy performance after retrofitting measures and simulation. Results show that applying these retrofitting measures; energy use has been reduced by 15 percent from the baseline (BAU) energy use of an average of 14.6 kWh/m2 yearly.