Effectiveness of Green Roofs and Green Walls on Energy Consumption and Indoor Comfort in Arid Climates

Abstract

Increased urbanization have many negative effects on human well-being, city infrastructure, electricity usage and the increase of indoor temperatures. A solution may be to retrofit existing buildings, with implementing a vegetated layer to roofs and walls, this may enhance building performance, reduce consumption and improve indoor comfort. Cities with tall buildings may be more adequate to implement a green-wall as it have more area to make impact. This paper examines the energy reduction advantages of adding greenery on buildings in the hot arid climate of Egypt by considering three typical types of residential buildings in the city of Cairo as a case study. Designbuilder software was selected to stimulate the buildings chosen in this research. The results shows that an extensive soil thickness of 15cm performs better in the arid climates. electricity consumption for the base case is 52 kWh/m2 annually when used a traditional external envelop and dropped to 43 kWh/m2 when a vegetated layer added to the whole building (roof & wall), annual electricity consumption reduced by 17% to 25% per annum when added a vegetated layer. In addition to enhancing the indoor thermal comfort by 3 PMV values and indoor air temperature by 5°C.

A Study of Modeling Techniques of Building Energy Consumption

“…The measurements taken to reduce energy consumption in residential building should not affect thermal comfort conditions. Some authors have suggested and studied the effect of facade shading and green roofs in conserving thermal comfort with less consumed energy [14][15][16]. These different modeling techniques have different strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and applicabilities.…”

Quantifying NOx emissions in Egypt using TROPOMI observations

“…They also meet the needs of industry. Summer peaks in electricity consumption are mostly driven by temperature, as illustrated by the increasing sales of air conditioning and ventilation systems for several decades (Wahba et al, 2018). The use of air conditioning in cars, which requires an additional amount of fuel, could also contribute to the increase in NO x emissions in summer.…”

A Systematic Review on the Existing Research, Practices, and Prospects Regarding Urban Green Infrastructure for Thermal Comfort in a High-Density Urban Context

“…Water 2022, 14, 2496 31 of 42 analysis [72]. EnergyPlus and DesignBuilder are more suitable for building and indoor scales [73][74][75]. As there are more small-scale UGI studies, the use of software for the building scales analysis is thus more common.…”