Abstract

Green buildings have been gaining in popularity over the past few years in Jordan. This is attributed to environmental and financial reasons directly related to energy consumption and cost. Energy sector in Jordan faces two main challenges which are the fast growing of energy demand and the scarcity of resources to fulfill this demand. Green buildings can save energy by designing them as near Zero Energy Buildings, where they produce amount of energy almost equal the amount of energy they consume. In special cases green buildings can be designed as Net zero energy buildings, where they produce as much energy as they consume. Jordan government encourage people to adopt net zero green buildings by issuing the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Law No. 13 of 2012, that allows selling excessive electricity to electricity companies. Despite these benefits of green buildings, they are not yet the norm in the building sector in Jordan. This can be attributed to the high construction cost of green building compared to traditional one. However, this may not be true if the whole life cycle cost of the building is considered, in which the cost not only include design and construction but also operation and maintenance as well. This paper aims to provide real life cycle cost analysis for a typical residential building in Jordan, and to search different effective building strategies and design scenarios that will lead to a successful near Zero Energy Building. The search will apply main green building strategies recommended for Jordan climatic zone. The outcome of this study is a list of best economically feasible design solutions and system selections that result in near Zero Energy Building in Jordan for residential buildings.

References

[1] RECREEE, 2016, Energy Profile of Jordan, The Regional Center for Renewable Energy andEnergy Efficiency (RCREEE), Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt.
[2] McNichol, E. (2016). It’s Time for States to Invest in Infrastructure. Washington DC: Centeron Budget and Policy Priorities.
[3] Attia, S., 2016, Zero Energy Building design in Hot Climates Workshop, available fromhttp://www.shadyattia.net/academic/WorkshopZEB/index.html, Accessed: 01.04.2018
[4] Al Tarabsheh, A., & Ababne, M. (2010). Analysis of solar radiation in Jordan. Jordan J MechInd Eng, 4(6), 733-737.
[5] Al-Sallami, H., 2015, Analysis of Energy Use Intensity in Residential Buildings in Jordan,Master Thesis, German Jordanian University.
[6] JNBC, 2009. Thermal Insulation Code, Jordanian National Building Council, 2nd edition,Amman, Jordan.
[7] Greenpeace 2013. Jordan’s Future Energy. Available at:http://www.greenpeace.org/arabic/PageFiles/481146/Jordan_Report2013.pdf.Accessed:01.04.2018
[8] IEA SHC Task 40, 2013. Towards Net Zero Energy Solar Buildings. http://task40.ieashc.org/Data/Sites/11/documents/ebc_annex_52_factsheet.pdf. Accessed: 03.04.2018
[9] Crawley, D., Pless, S. D., & Torcellini, P. A. (2009). Getting to net zero. National RenewableEnergy Laboratory.
[10] Parliament, E. U. (2010). Directive of the European Parliament and of the council on theenergy performance of buildings (recast).
[11] Visscher, H., Mlecnik, E., & Meijer, F. (2009, December). The impact of energy performanceregulations on systems of building control. In RICS, COBRA Research Conference, Universityof Cape Town (Vol. 10, pp. 1356-1367).
[12] Peterson, K., Torcellini, P., Grant, R., Taylor, C., Punjabi, S., & Diamond, R. (2015). Acommon definition for zero energy buildings. Prepared for the US Department of Energy byThe National Institute of Building Sciences, US Department of Energy.
[13] ZEBRA 2020 Data Tool, 2016, Energy efficiency trends in buildings. Available from: http://www.zebramonitoring.enerdata.eu/overall-building-activities/nzeb-definitions-by-country.html, Accessed: 4.04.2018.
[14] Jordan Housing Development Association, reports, 2016
[15] Jordan Department of Statistics, Building Permit Report Nov. 2015.
[16] DOE, 2016. EnergyPlus [online]. Available from:https://www.doe.gov.ph/transparency/2016-annual-report. Accessed 1.04.2018.