Systematic review turning existing Egyptian residential buildings in green ones

Abstract

Due to the continuous technological advancements, expensive utility bills became a major concern for the world residents as well as governments. As a result, energy consumption mitigation became a prominent target for modern researchers. Consequently, solutions were introduced, suggesting that green principles be applied to the construction field. However, even if newly built structures became completely green and emitted no harmful emissions, the net emissions of a given city's overall construction would still be in operation, harming and polluting the environment with all their might. Therefore, it is needed to work on the net green score and rather focus on the conversion of existing buildings into green. Using a questionnaire to create a hypothetical typical Egyptian home, this study aims to apply green solutions to existing buildings in Egypt. The questionnaire also tackles other areas of Egyptian society in order to better understand their awareness and understanding of green concepts. The study’s methodology is based on the collective data gathered from other researchers in the field with applied case studies in climates similar to Egypt’s due to its lack of these solutions applications and concepts. The solutions suggested included solar panels as a retrofitting solution, and windows orientation and window-to-wall ratio (WRR) as a renovating one. As a result, the "windows" solutions suggested in this paper happened to be the most effective.