Transitioning to low-carbon suburbs in hot-arid regions: A case-study of Emirati villas in Abu Dhabi

Birge, David; Berger, Alan

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.09.013

Cited by 18 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…(2012), the authors show that approximately 10 trees per hectare in urban parks would potentially offset the emissions from construction and maintenance of the park after 50 years. Similarly, Birge and Berger (2019) show that 3–10 trees, and up to 6116 trees, are required to offset the remaining greenhouse gas emissions of a net zero operational energy villa (including user mobility) and a standard villa in Abu Dhabi, respectively. The comprehensiveness of this modeling framework helps ensure that decisions made to improve environmental performance at one life cycle stage or scale of the built environment result in net overall benefits, rather than inadvertently reducing performance in other areas.…”

Section: Developing a Decision‐making Framework For The Built Environ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a multiscale framework for modeling and improving the life cycle environmental performance of built stocks

Stephan

Crawford

Bunster

et al. 2022

J of Industrial Ecology

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Cities are complex sociotechnical systems, of which buildings and infrastructure assets (built stocks) constitute a critical part. As the main global users of primary energy and emitters of associated greenhouse gases, there is a need for the introduction of measures capable of enhancing the environmental performance of built stocks in cities and mitigating negative externalities such as pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. To date, most environmental modeling and assessment approaches are often fragmented across disciplines and limited in scope, failing to provide a comprehensive evaluation. These approaches tend to focus either on one scale relevant to a discipline (e.g., buildings, roads, parks) or particular environmental flows (e.g., energy, greenhouse emissions). Here, we present a framework aimed at overcoming many of these limitations. By combining life cycle assessment and dynamic modeling using a nested systems theory, this framework provides a more holistic and integrated approach for modeling and improving the environmental performance of built stocks and their occupants, including material stocks and flows, embodied, operational, and mobility‐related environmental flows, as well as cost, and carbon sequestration in materials and green infrastructure. This comprehensive approach enables a very detailed parametrization that supports testing different policy scenarios at a material, element, building, and neighborhood level, and across different environmental flows. We test parts of our modeling framework on a proof‐of‐concept case study neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia, demonstrating its breadth. The proposed modeling framework can enable an advanced assessment of built stocks that enhances our capacity to improve the life cycle environmental performance of cities.

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Section: Developing a Decision‐making Framework For The Built Environ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a multiscale framework for modeling and improving the life cycle environmental performance of built stocks

Stephan

Crawford

Bunster

et al. 2022

J of Industrial Ecology

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show abstract

“…Today, the limitation of fossil fuel use, a major cause of the present day climate change, along with greenhouse gas emission reduction [1][2][3], represent the main energy challenges that must be faced, being fundamental aspects of international agreements (COP 2015) and EU (European Union) Directives [4,5], which are particularly addressed in order to reduce primary energy consumption and increase the share of renewable energy sources (RES) [6][7][8][9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Comparison Between a Stand-Alone and a Grid Connected PV System vs. Grid Distance

et al. 2020

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The limitation of fossil fuel uses and GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions reduction are two of the main objectives of the European energy policy and global agreements that aim to contain climate changes. To this end, the building sector, responsible for important energy consumption rates, requires a significant improvement of its energetic performance, an obtainable increase of its energy efficiency and the use of renewable sources. Within this framework, in this study, we analysed the economic feasibility of a stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) plant, dimensioned in two configurations with decreasing autonomy. Their Net Present Value at the end of their life span was compared with that of the same plant in both grid-connected and storage-on-grid configurations, as well as being compared with a grid connection without PV. The analysis confirms that currently, for short distances from the grid, the most suitable PV configuration is the grid-connected one, but also that the additional use of a battery with a limited capacity (storage on grid configuration) would provide interesting savings to the user, guaranteeing a fairly energetic autonomy. Stand-alone PV systems are only convenient for the analysed site from distances of the order of 5 km, and it is worth noting that such a configuration is neither energetically nor economically sustainable due to the necessary over-dimensioning of both its generators and batteries, which generates a surplus of energy production that cannot be used elsewhere and implies a dramatic cost increase and no corresponding benefits. The results have been tested for different latitudes, confirming what we found. A future drop of both batteries’ and PV generators’ prices would let the economic side of PV stand-alone systems be reconsidered, but not their energetic one, so that their use, allowing energy exchanges, results in being more appropriate for district networks. For all PV systems, avoided emissions of both local and GHG gases (CO2) have been estimated.

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Scenarios that Could Give Rise to an African Net-Zero Energy Transition

Nwokolo,

Singh,

Khan

et al. 2023

CSR, Sustainability, Ethics &Amp; Governance

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Transitioning to low-carbon suburbs in hot-arid regions: A case-study of Emirati villas in Abu Dhabi

Cited by 18 publications

References 99 publications

Towards a multiscale framework for modeling and improving the life cycle environmental performance of built stocks

Towards a multiscale framework for modeling and improving the life cycle environmental performance of built stocks

Economic Comparison Between a Stand-Alone and a Grid Connected PV System vs. Grid Distance

Scenarios that Could Give Rise to an African Net-Zero Energy Transition

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