Energy Standards for Non-residential Buildings in Arab Countries

This paper presents an energy analysis in support of developing an Energy Code for New Commercial Buildings for the Arab Countries. Energy efficiency of buildings is a major consideration of the architectural design. The building used for this study is a twenty-story building with a typical floor area of rectangular shape of 900m2. Two computer simulation programs (Excel) had been developed. The first to calculate the heating and cooling degree days (DDH & DDC) for the selected Arab cities, and the second to predict the complied energy required for the new buildings based on the weather data of each Arab city, and building materials and construction. The OTTV approach was used to develop appropriate criteria for the building envelope for most commercial buildings in the Arab region. The analysis shows that the OTTV for the exterior walls for most commercial buildings in the Arab region should not exceed 90 W/m2, and 12 W/m2for the roofs. Also, the WWR should be less than 60% with SHGC less than 0.49.