Building Green in Jordan? Performance Evaluation of the aqaba Residential Energy Efficiency Pilot Project (AREE)

The AREE house was built in 2007/2008 to provide a showcase of a high performance building in Aqaba city in the southern part of Jordan. The total energy performance of the building was achieved through three types of measures grouped into passive design elements, material choices and renewable energy installations. The energy performance and associated costs and benefits for each type were modelled to highlight opportunities for low and high income segments of the residential building market in Jordan. This paper provides a post construction evaluation of the actual energy performance of the building and the real costs and benefits. The sustainability concept of the building is reviewed, as well as the construction process and the life cycle costing of the energy enhancing measures. The findings show that passive design elements and material choices do improve the energy performance. This is derived from the actual indoor comfort monitoring in comparison with base case simulations. The payback time on the incremental investments needed is less than 3.5 years. At the same time, the monitoring also showed that not all passive design measures for energy performance were effective. This paper reflects on the experience and lessons learned from AREE for potential wider integration of sustainability elements into building projects in Jordan

Wafeer Initiative: enabling a market for water efficiency in Saudi Arabia

Significant saving potential is believed to exist in all economic activities of the private sector of MENA countries. However this potential is hardly explored in systematic ways. Particularly in the context of a country like Saudi Arabia, where the cost of water production is among the highest in the world, the incentives to examine this potential should be high. In 2007, a group of private sector actors and with support from the Saudi Ministry of Water and Electricity (MoWE) launched Wafeer Initiative mainly for this purpose of exploring the potential of water efficiency in the Saudi Arabian industrial sector. This case describes briefly the experience of this initiative and lessons learned

Lost in Transitions: Sustainability Strategies and Social Contexts

Corporations are increasingly asked to provide innovative solutions to address environmental and social concerns, such as persistent poverty, pollution and climate change. The paradox in this call is that within the current economic logic, most companies will continue to find working at these interfaces problematic. Some sort of tension is inevitable because of the conflicting and competing demands on corporations. Using the construct of sustainability strategies, this thesis goes behind the tension. From cases in emerging economies to cases of radical sustainability innovations, the thesis explores the variety of motives, the role of culture, national institutions and industry structures in modulating organisational strategies at the interfaces with the natural environment and the wider public good. It, further, questions the degree to which business strategy can play a role in system innovation for sustainability. The practical implications of this thesis concern how the role of corporations can be made more effective given the competitive market conditions, the heterogeneity of contexts in which corporations operate and the changing nature of demands and expectations on corporations across industries, geographies and time

Saudi Arabia

Comparable country profile that describes the evolution and practice of corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR) in Saudi Arabia