ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 656

1. Introduction
Buildings are essential for human life. The consumed energy for cooling, heating and ventilation
define the characteristics of each building. However, the higher the CO2 emissions, the higher the
energy consumption, and the building is considered to have a poor levels of energy performance.
It is a known fact that around 40% of the total energy consumption in Europe has been consumed
by the built environment, and as a result, the building sector is one of the major consumers of
energy. In 2009, European households consumed 68% of the final energy use in buildings mainly
used for heating purposes. As a result, the poor levels of energy usage in buildings placed the
residential sector as a major CO2 emission source in Europe (BPIE 2011). This problem has been mitigated with new constructed buildings through strict buildings codes and regulations. However,
the new buildings only make up 0.5-2% of the total building stock (Stafford, Gorse & Shao 2007). It
is evident that a key element of this problem relies on the old, existing buildings that represent a
great part of the built environment .This international awareness towards the built environment
and their impact on environment has increased in the last few decades. The United Arab Emirates
(UAE) is one of the Middle Eastern countries that took the initiative to provide serious steps to
mitigate the impact of the built environment. In 2010 warning signs have appeared on the surface showing that the UAE has the highest per capita ecological footprint in the world (Global
Footprint Network 2015). Moreover, 80% of this footprint is due to the consumption of carbon
concentrated goods and services, such as water and energy (EWS-WWF 2015).

Figure1: UAE’s ecological footprint in 2012 (WWF 2012)
The UAE government took the initiative to provide serious steps, as a result, many policies and
guidelines have been introduced, such as the UAE Green Economy Initiative, Dubai Municipality
Green Code, Estidama & the Pearl Rating System, Emirates Green Building Council, and Dubai
Supreme Council of Energy, and its affiliated programs designed to facilitate energy efficiency, i.e.
RSB, DCCE, and Etihad Super ESCO. Thus, an improvement has been achieved and eventually the
UAE was able to come down from topping the list for the most environmentally wasteful country
on the planet (GOUMBOOK 2012). However, all the efforts mentioned focused on new constructed
buildings. It is evident that this action will not provide a great impact on its own. Since the existing
buildings form the biggest portion of the built environment in the UAE, the practical and fastest
way to reduce the CO2 emissions is to include them in retrofitting program (Sunikka & Boon 2003;

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ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari - Lecce, Italy