Prospects of energy conservation and management in buildings – The Saudi Arabian scenario versus global trends

Muhammad Abdul Mujeebu and Othman Subhi Alshamrani

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016, vol. 58, issue C, 1647-1663

Abstract: The volume of construction work in the GCC countries is dramatically increasing, which poses challenges on energy demand and the environment. The building construction sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest and fastest in the GCC states. It is estimated that 2.32 million new homes are to be built by 2020 in order to meet the demand of growing population. This article provides a comprehensive picture of the initiatives and research progress in energy conservation and management in the Saudi Arabian building sector. Starting with a background of energy scenario, the article covers the policy-level measures and research and development activities reported so far, and compares the current situation with the global trends. This review reveals that even though there are promising research activities, policy supports and growing public awareness, the Kingdom has wide scope for further developments in order to ensure (through the utilization of its resources at their fullest potential) that all the viable state-of-the-art technologies for energy conservation and management in buildings are implemented. Accordingly, a consolidated outline of the key areas in the domain is presented, and many potential new research directions are proposed.

Keywords: Energy management; Buildings; Energy efficiency; Passive design; Building envelope; Phase change material; Air-conditioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032115017104
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:58:y:2016:i:c:p:1647-1663

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.327

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().