METHODOLOGY FOR OPTIMIZATION OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY USING VEGETATED FAÇADES IN MULTI-STORY RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS WITH REFERENCE TO COLD SEMI-ARID AND HOT ARID CLIMATES

Abstract

The issue of energy consumption in various sectors of life, especially in the building sector and, reducing energy are considered a major challenge faced by construction energy today. The building envelope can be improved to make a reduction in energy needed for cooling and heating the building, therefore there is an urgent need to make the envelope of the building more efficient, to keep the energy for resources future generations and to offer better architecture for now and future.

The research aims is optimization of energy efficiency by using vegetated façades which are considered one of the innovative fields of green technology, in multi-story residential buildings in cold semi-arid and hot arid climate. It investigates the parametrical design for using green vegetated façades in its two types, direct and indirect green vegetated system. For this purpose, the energy consumption and CO2 emissions are evaluated by using DesignBuilder tool, the vegetated layer is considered as an additional layer for building, and also provide the effect of shadow to the façades therefore, the comparison will be between direct and indirect green vegetated, shading device and insulated façade by thermal insulation materials at the same time with non-vegetated façade of residential buildings in two different locations with two different climates in Duhok/ Iraq under cold semi-arid climate, and Cairo/ Egypt under hot arid climate respectively.

The study concluded that Green vegetated façades reduce the energy which is demanded for air conditioning devices, the reduction in cooling period would be from 16.6% to 65.0% for direct green vegetation and from 16.6% to 70% for indirect green vegetation while the reduction in heating period was from 9.4% to 100% for direct green vegetation and from 3.5% to 100% for indirect green vegetation except some increase in energy consumption or not effective in some orientations and at the same time reduce the annual energy consumption and the annual CO2 emissions from 17.9% to 59.4% for direct green vegetation and from 18.0% to 63.3% for indirect green vegetation according to location and orientation.