GREEN RETROFITABILITY INDEX AND SUSTAINABLE   1من   اصل2

DEVELOPMENT IN EGYPT
A.L. ENG .   Karim   M .   Ayyed
Associate Lecturer of Green Architecture and Sustainable Development
Advisor to the Egyptian Green Building Council
While Egypt is striving to make a sustainable development plan, there are
still many issues that are yet to be tackled. One of them is the need to have
green buildings that can save energy and resources. Knowing that buildings
consume up to 43%of Egypt’s energy and about 20% of the country’s
water resources, green buildings can contribute to a great extent to the
sought-after sustainable development plan
However, relying on new green buildings alone diminishes the benefits that
can be obtained from the green building science. Conventional existing
buildings, with their massive number, are enormous sink-holes that would
still drain the country’s resources for decades. Therefore, it is essential to
start efforts to green the existing buildings alongside erecting green new
ones. This branch of green building science is called’ green retrofitting’. It is
a relatively new field that started as recently as the 2000s. Since then,
various attempts to frame the process have been made. In 2008, the US
Green Building Council published the LEED-EBOM (LEED-Existing
Buildings: Operations and Maintenance) as a road map for stakeholders
who wish to cut down running costs and /or renovate existing buildings in
an environmentally-conscious manner.
But before starting to apply green retrofitting, there are many questions that
pop up in one’s mind. Which buildings need green retrofitting and which
ones do not? Which ones are more feasible to green? Which ones should
we start with?
Most green retrofitting efforts adopt case-by-case studies to evaluate
retrofitting projects and the economic feasibility of greening a give existing
building. These case-by-case studies can only be carried out by well-