Towards Attaining Net Zero-Energy Buildings through Retrofitting School Buildings

Abstract

Educational sector in Egypt needs a great interest; in order to update educational buildings especially school buildings. The existing school buildings represent both the problem and the solution, because working on existing school buildings would reflect immediately on the current energy consumption situation, unlike solutions of designing new schools that would take a lot of time to show results. Private schools depend heavily on air conditioners to achieve thermal comfort to students without paying attention to passive design strategies, and this leads to high energy consumption and increased carbon dioxide emission. The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology that can be used to convert private school buildings in Egypt from high energy demand into net-zero energy buildings. The paper concludes with analysis, deduction and evidence that with energy efficient retrofitting, school buildings will be able to reduce energy consumption by 33%, and produce energy with solar panels equal to energy consumed.