Buildings are responsible for at least 40% of energy use in most countries. In Egypt, energy use in buildings has grown in the last 20 years mainly due to the increases of population, number of households, as well as increase in service demand, such as more air conditio ners, more computers, and larger houses. Therefore, various improved technology, such as energy efficien t building shells, appliances, and building designs, are strongly expected to control energy consumption in residence and commercial sectors. Meanwhile, Low Carbon Building technol ogies can be classified into th ree key areas: building materials, renewable energy for buildings and building design. These technologies are relevant for all residential, commercial and industrial buildings. They are relevant for new as well as retrofitted existing buildings. Under these circumstances, the main goal of this paper is to develop a practical platform for applying the key of building material to improve the building energy efficiency in Egypt. Eventually, the research discusses the following objectives:  The past experience of vernacular architecture.  Whether there are signi fi cant differences in initial embodied energy of different building material in two residential buildings. The comparison between the vernacular and the modern examples in thei r building materials, can achieve a satisfactory result on reducing (59,77%) of the total CO2 emissions. Vernacular buildings require similar amounts of energy and result in similar levels of CO2 emissions, both being much more than the equivalent values for modern building.

Buildings are responsible for at least 40% of energy use in most countries. In Egypt, energy use in buildings has grown in the last 20 years mainly due to the increases of population, number of households, as well as increase in service demand, such as more air conditio ners, more computers, and larger houses. Therefore, various improved technology, such as energy efficien t building shells, appliances, and building designs, are strongly expected to control energy consumption in residence and commercial sectors. Meanwhile, Low Carbon Building technol ogies can be classified into th ree key areas: building materials, renewable energy for buildings and building design. These technologies are relevant for all residential, commercial and industrial buildings. They are relevant for new as well as retrofitted existing buildings. Under these circumstances, the main goal of this paper is to develop a practical platform for applying the key of building material to improve the building energy efficiency in Egypt. Eventually, the research discusses the following objectives:  The past experience of vernacular architecture.  Whether there are signi fi cant differences in initial embodied energy of different building material in two residential buildings. The comparison between the vernacular and the modern examples in thei r building materials, can achieve a satisfactory result on reducing (59,77%) of the total CO2 emissions. Vernacular buildings require similar amounts of energy and result in similar levels of CO2 emissions, both being much more than the equivalent values for modern building.

The building shape and spaces greatly influence ambient temperatures in those spaces. The thermal performance of interior spaces is highly influenced by a number of factors. On top of these factors are as follows: space ratios (height, width, length), walls and facade finishing colors, window openings (height, width, length) and the different types of windows glass, and the vertical and horizontal sun breakers. To achieve this aim, the research is done by the analytical and applied methods, using the simulation software Thermal Analysis Software, from the climatic analysis of New Assiut City as well as identifying the prevailing residential patterns, and detailed study of the selected residential building, identifying the software used, and analyzing the simulation results for ambient room temperatures of the hot periods for shading device protrusion of the selected model. The research ends with a number of results and recommendations. Such results may be applied in hot desert areas.

Commonly, the housing built in Egypt has not considered in its design process the environmental and energy aspects. The materials used to build are mostly the cheapest, and not necessarily the most appropriate to the environment and the local climate. The literature survey by the authors indicated that no studies are available on the building materials using life cycle assessment (LCA) in Egypt. Therefore, this study comes on line to partially cover this gap. The main objective of this paper is to perform an LCA of four common building materials from the Egyptian residential sector considering the first four stages of the LCA. The brick types are often built with four systems based on the following materials; Straw/Raw, Sand, clay and cement brick. Therefore, the focus in this paper is to assess the potential environmental impacts of these four types on midpoint and endpoint methods by using SimaPro software under IMAPCT 2002+ method. The assumed functional unit is one Kilogram of each brick type. The collected available inventory data of Egyptian bricks of the four types are utilized (partially) in this paper. As the results of midpoint method, the clay brick has the largest adverse environmental impact. In contrast, the straw/raw brick results in a difference of 170 Eco-point by 68% increasing, and especially the non-renewable energy impact category. Considering the endpoint method, again, clay brick has the largest human health damage and resources depletion. On the other hand, the straw/raw brick results in a difference of 75 Eco-point by 75% increasing. Therefore the authors conclude that using straw/raw brick is the more friendly to the environment while the worst brick type which hurt the environment is the clay brick (red brick) and then the cement brick.

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) program developments were intended for the construction of life cycle inventory (LCI) database for refrigerators, computers, and general consumer products. But buildings are different from general consumer products for their long life span, and possess different characteristics from consumer goods. Examples of the various programs developed or commercialized for the performance of LCA are Be Cost, BOUSTED, ECOLOGIC, IDEA, PEMS, TEMIS, SIMAPRO, ECOPACK2000, TEAM, OfE, LIFEWAY, LCAiT, GaBi, KCL-ECO, and LCAiT each of them special country-specific, the paper introduce a brief on each program. From aforementioned, Egypt do not have tool to estimate carbon emissions from building LCA, thus the paper sheds light on Be Cost tool to take advantage from it, furthermore to be a guide in creating ECE-LCA Tool. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to develop a tool to estimate the life cycle carbon emissions (Global Warming Potential (GWP)) of the residential building materials in Egypt.

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for assessing the environmental impacts of a system, product or service. Cleaner production and pollution prevention opportunities for the cement sector include: 1) use of alternate fuels in cement kilns; 2) NOX reduction; 3) reduction of dust emissions; 4) reuse of bypass dust; and 5) treatment of hazardous waste. Nowadays, Egypt faced energy scarcity inducing political, social and environmental factors putting pressure on the cement industries to obtain their energy from coal instead of the natural gas, solar and mazzut. Therefore, this paper focuses on assessing the environmental impacts of cement producing facilities in Egypt with regard to their environmental compliance if coal is used compared to other sources by using the LCA tool. A comparative analysis among various fuel types of typical cement plant in Egypt is conducted. Results show that the decision of replacing the existing used fuels in cement industry by coal will carry an additional burden on the environment approximately by 20%. Based on a midpoint method, the global warming potential and respiratory inorganics recorded highly negative impacts of 20% and 25% respectively when using the coal compared with other fuels type. Referring to the endpoint method, the damages to human health (DALY) is dominated when using the coal with a relative contribution of 30%. This increased adverse expected damage must be faced from the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) by the limitation and constrains of how to control the output emissions from the plant chimney.

The construction industry in Egypt is a main contributor to the Egyptian economy and one of its fastest rising sectors. The development rate is the direct result of high request for housing as well as the state ’s large infrastru cture projects. The main common construction materi- als in Egypt are the adobe/clay, cement, sand and straw/raw brick. Recently, the private manufac- turers have commercially produced walls for low- rise structures up to three stories high by propos- ing a new building system called a 3 -D panel system (3 -D PS). The 3D -PS is currently being used in many building in Egypt, without any environmental assessment regardless of the structural system or aesthetic. Therefore, this paper comes on line to assess the environ mental impacts of this new construction system. It compares its performance with that of the other traditional con- struction materials/methods. The software SimaPro 8.1 is used under IMAPCT 2002+ method to compute the environmental impact assessment of the 3D -PS. The results show that the clay brick has largest adverse impacts than the 3D -PS with a difference of 7%. In contrast, the sand and straw/raw brick have a lowest adverse impacts. Comparing the 3D -PS with sand brick, the latter has lower adverse impacts by 81.40%. It is concluded that the clay brick is the worst from envi- ronmental impact point of view while the best is the sand brick and straw/raw brick. Between the worst and the best comes the 3D- PS. The study recommends carrying out a life cycle assessment of any new product/material before using it.

Residential buildings play prominent role in sustainable development and environmental impacts. Therefore, the aim of this paper is using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to assess the environmental impacts of the Egyptian typical residential building. SimaPro V8.1 was used in the analysis under ISO 14040 standards. Results show that the main contributor to all other environmental impacts are mainly those related to energy use in the operational/use stage contributing by (71.9%). On the other hand, the disposal scenarios provide positive environmental impacts by (-12.1%). Further possible measures to enhance the environmental impacts are mentioned in the paper conclusions.