Abstract:The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has a fast growing building sector driven by factors like burgeoning population, economic and infrastructure development and modernization. Buildings, owing to their energy intensive operation, are imposing significant energy, environmental and economic burdens for the country. To overcome these challenges and improve the sustainability levels in the building and energy sectors, it has been decided to develop 9500 MWs of renewable energy projects by 2023. Given the annual solar radiation level of over 2200 kWh/m 2 , solar energy is expected to play the predominant role in achieving this target. Traditionally, KSA's emphasis has been to pursue large-scale energy projects. Globally, however, small scale and building related projects have significantly contributed to the rapid growth of solar energy. Application of solar technologies in buildings is one of the important areas that has been ignored in the country. This paper explores the potential for rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) in KSA's residential sector. Taking into account appropriate PV design considerations and local building construction and cultural practices, it calculates the power generation potential for 13 major cities. It is found that a total of 51 TWh of electricity can be annually generated from these cities, accounting for 30% of the total domestic demand. Findings of a case study on application of the PV system on 248,452 m 2 of rooftop area of the residential buildings in the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals undertaken with the help of ArcGIS 10.2 and PVsyst modeling have also been provided.
Water and energy efficiency are given high priority in all green building assessment systems. However, a method to assess and improve their contributions to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has not been developed. This research aims to fill this gap. At the time of this research, most certified green buildings in Jordan were under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v2.2 new construction. The relationships between the LEED v2.2 "water efficiency" (WE) and "energy and atmosphere" (EA) standards and the UN SDGs were explored using a quantitative descriptive methodology. Structured questionnaire surveys yielded 55 responses from Jordanian building industry experts. Pearson's Chi-square and frequency tests were carried out to examine these relationships. We propose a new Comprehensive Contribution to Development Index (CCDI) to assess the contributions of the implementation of LEED v2.2 WE and EA to achieve the UN SDGs. The results show a positive relationship between LEED v2.2 prerequisites and credits in both WE and EA categories with the UN SDGs 6-9, 12-13, and 15, suggesting that the proposed CCDI is a reliable and robust tool for the evaluation of the contribution of water and energy efficiency in LEED v2.2-certified green buildings to achieving the UN SDGs in Jordan.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.