The building sector is one of the crucial stakeholders in the global energy and environmental scenario. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool widely used to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings, materials and activities. Saudi Arabia has a rapidly growing construction sector with over $1 Trillion of ongoing projects. The housing sector, annually needing over 2.32 million new residential units in coming years, is yet to entertain environmental performance of buildings in its list of priorities. The present work undertakes a LCA study of a three-bedroom modern villa located in Dhahran. Providing the structural details of the villa, an account of the 18 main construction materials in terms of quantity and application has been produced. Embodied energy of these materials has been estimated adopting ‘cradle-to-gate’ approach. Environmental impacts of the materials have been modeled with the help of SimaPro software. The results suggest that concrete accounts for more than 43% of the total embodied energy of the house and is also the predominant material in terms of the overall environmental impacts. Steel is the second most prominent material both in terms of quantity and embodied energy.

The application of renewable energy has been an integral part of the sustainability drive in the building sector and solar photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most effective technologies in this respect. The present study aims to investigate the prospects of solar PV in residential buildings in the hot–humid climatic conditions. The study discusses the utilization of building roofs for the application of PV in terms of potential hurdles and utilization factor (UF). Technical performance of PV systems has also been investigated in terms of power output as well as the energy saved as a result of the shading impact of panels for two types of residential units, apartments and villas. Investigation of 70 sample residential buildings reveals the average UF of 0.21 and 0.28 for apartments and villas, respectively. For the case study of apartment and villa residential units, roof UF has been found to be 13% and 15% with a respective PV output of 6079 kWh/year and 6162 kWh/year. Potential PV output at the city level has also been estimated. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to evaluate the impact of various cost and design parameters on the viability of PV systems.

To meet the increasing energy demand and to shave the peak, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is currently planning to invest more on renewable energy (RE) seeking diversity of energy resources. Through the integration of demand side management measures and renewable energy distributed generation (DG) systems, the study outlined in this paper aims at investigating the potential of hybrid renewable energy systems in supplying energy demands for residential communities in an oil-rich country. The residential community considered in this study, located in the eastern region of KSA, has an annual electrical usage of 1,174 GWh and an electrical peak load of 335 MW that are met solely by the grid. The results of the analyses indicated that the implementation of cost-effective energy efficiency measures (EEMs) reduced electricity usage by 38% and peak demand by 51% as well as CO₂ emissions by 38%. While, the analysis of the hybrid systems showed that purchasing electricity from the grid is the best option with a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of $0.1/kWh based on the current renewable energy market and economic conditions of KSA, RE systems can be cost-effective to meet the loads of the residential communities under specific electricity prices and capital cost levels.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have over 50% and 30% of global oil and gas reserves respectively and have therefore traditionally relied on fossil fuels to meet all their energy requirements. In recent years however there has been a realization to diversify their energy mix and tap on their rich solar energy potential. While buildings account for as much as 80% of the total national power generation in these countries, the emphasis thus far has been on large scale solar energy projects. The article examines the prospects of application of PV in building by undertaking a strength, weakness, opportunities and threat (SWOT) analysis. In this respect wide ranging technical, cultural, economic and policy related factors have been highlighted. A modeling exercise has also been undertaken to examine the rooftop applicability of PV in residential buildings. Underlying examples from developed countries, the paper concludes with policy recommendations to promote the application of solar.