Publications

Energy autonomous house EAH does exist. Many of these energy sufficient buildings are found in Europe and monitoring them showed that they are almost energy autarky under normal conditions. Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is a dense city in the Middle East that suffers from the lack of infrastructure and electricity in first place. The question the paper rise is; does Beirut need an EAH and could its environment help in achieving energy sufficiency? A description of the current situation will be presented and analyzed to form the base of a methodological framework that aims to investigate the technical, practical and financial feasibility of energy autonomy for a hypothetical house in Beirut. Furthermore, two case studies for different EAH in the UK and Germany will be examined and demonstrated to state the importance of reducing energy demand by using passive design and energy efficient appliances. Finally, this paper may reach to appropriate solutions for providing renewable energy resources that can be applied on Beirut’s existing residential buildings roofs and facades in addition to a set of design guidelines applying new constraints on the new developments