Energy and Buildings 40 (2008) 20372043

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Energy and Buildings

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Model for calculating the sustainable building index (SBI) in the kingdom of Bahrain
N.W. Alnaser a,*, R. Flanagan a, W.E. Alnaser b
a b

School of Construction Management, University of Reading, PO Box 26562, United Kingdom Physics Department, College of Science, University of Bahrain, PO Box 32038, Bahrain

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 21 March 2008 Accepted 26 May 2008 Keywords: A model Energy policy makers Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) or Building integrated wind turbines (BIWT) Sustainable buildings index

We have developed a model that allows players in the building and construction sector and the energy policy makers on energy strategies to be able to perceive the interest of investors in the kingdom of Bahrain in conducting Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) or Building integrated wind turbines (BIWT) projects, i.e. a partial sustainable or green buildings. The model allows the calculation of the Sustainable building index (SBI), which ranges from 0.1 (lowest) to 1.0 (highest); the higher gure the more chance for launching BIPV or BIWT. This model was tested in Bahrain and the calculated SBI was found 0.47. This means that an extensive effort must be made through policies on renewable energy, renewable energy education, and incentives to BIPV and BIWT projects, environmental awareness and promotion to clean and sustainable energy for building and construction projects. Our model can be used internationally to create a Global SBI database. The Sustainable building and construction initiative (SBCI), United Nation, can take the task for establishing such task using this model. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Statistics shows that 6070% of the total energy consumption in Bahrain is for buildings and constructions [1] (in UK it is 45.2%, [2]); generating around 55% of the Bahrains CO2 emissions (in UK it is 46 %, [3]). At present, renewable energy sources provide nearly nothing of Bahrains total primary energy requirements as it relies 100% on natural gas (in UK, it is around 1.7% with the remainder from fossil fuel or nuclear sources [4]). To meet governments aspiration for futuristic reduction in CO2 emissions, buildings must

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: naser1301@gmail.com (N.W. Alnaser), alnaserw@batelco.com.bh (W.E. Alnaser). Abbreviations: BIPV, building integrated photovoltaic; BIWT, building integrated wind turbines; SBI, sustainable building index; SBCI, sustainable building and construction initiative; SB, sustainable development; LEED, leadership in environmental engineering design; BREEAM, building research environmental assessment method; GB, green building; RE, renewable energy; EQC, energy quality coefcient; ECC, energy conversion coefcient; ESR, effective substitution ratio; GOBAS, green olympic building assessment system; CASBEE, comprehensive assessment system for building environmental efciency; SHWS, solar hot water system; GHPHWS, geothermal heat pump hot water system; AET, alternative energy technologies; ESCo, electricity service companies; GCC, gulf cooperation council; CER, certicates of emission reduction; CDM, clean development mechanism; SBCI, sustainable building and construction initiative. 0378-7788/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2008.05.015

have less reliance on conventional electricity, i.e. construct Building Integrated with Photovoltaic (BIPV) or use solar thermal panels (for water heating or space cooling) or electricity from solar concentrators or integrate the building with wind turbines called Building Integrated Wind Turbine, BIWT or use power from renewable energy resources. The best option for Bahrain is BIPV or BIWT since solar intensity is high (more than 6 kWh/m2/day [5]) and wind speed can be more than 7 m/s at height of more than 50 m [6]. The building construction and operation in USA (and probably, in a similar manner, in Bahrain and the rest of the world) have an enormous direct and indirect impact on the environment (http:// www.wbdg.org/design/sustainable.php) illustrated in Fig. 1. Buildings not only use resources such as energy and raw materials but they also generate waste and potentially harmful atmospheric emissions. As economy and population continue to expand, designers and builders face a unique challenge to meet demands for new and renovated facilities that are accessible, secure, healthy, and productive while minimizing their impact on the environment. In fact, practicing this type of building construction is part of the Sustainable development SB which is dened as a development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs. It requires the inextricable linkage of environment, economy and social status of the society or a country (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1. The annual environmental impact of buildings in USA (similarly Bahrain) [7].

Sustainable development requires that improvements in economic and social living conditions accord with the long-term process of securing the natural foundations of life. BIPV or BIWT (or sometimes called alternative energy technologies for building) is very important for the recent economic and environmental situation (declination of oil and natural gas production, global warming and climate change). The energy supply in buildings has 6070% impact on the environment [1] and consumes 6070% of Bahrains electricity generation. Conducting BIPV and BIWT projects in Bahrain is a correct step toward implementing Sustainable building construction (SBC) as SB is a very broad material and is beyond the scope of this paper. According to LEED (set by the US Green Council, i.e. another name for a SBC) the Energy and atmosphere in the building construction (where the use of solar or wind energy is involved) consist nearly 25% of the total scale of 100%; knowing that a green building consider Sustainable sites (20%), Water efciency (7.3%), Material and resources (18.7%), Indoor environmental quality (21.7%) and Innovation and design (7.3%) as demonstrated in Fig. 3 and Table 1. Points are awarded, with a total of 69 points (credits) possible. 40% of these points must be achieved to gain certication, which includes four progressive levels: certied, silver, gold and platinum. www.usgbc.org/LEED. On the other hand, BREEAM sets standards for best practice in sustainable development. It assesses the performance of buildings in the following areas:  Management: overall management policy, commissioning site management and procedural issues.  Energy use: operational energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) issues.  Health and well-being: indoor and external issues affecting health and well-being  Pollution: air and water pollution issues.  Transport: transport-related CO2 and location-related factors.

Fig. 3. Green building Rating (LEED); it contains 6 environmental features with total score of 69. BIPV or BIWT falls within the feature known as Energy Efciency and Atmosphere, it consists 20 criteria, and has 17 credits.

 Land use: green eld and brown eld sites.  Ecology: ecological value conservation and enhancement of the site.  Materials: environmental implication of building materials, including life-cycle impacts.  Water: consumption and water efciency. BREEAM has also many features with different ratings or credits; energy (22%), transport (8%), pollution (10%), materials (14%), water (10%), land use and ecology (12%), health and wellbeing (14%) and management (10%) Fig. 4. In fact, there are other established international sustainability rating tools (www.your building.org/display/yb/Denition+of+sustainable+commercial+ buildings). The above indicates that using renewable energy (BIPV and BIWT) for buildings represents nearly 25% of the requirement of a sustainable building. This is why we had considered BIPV or BIWT as partial sustainable buildings. Among other terminologies that incorporate BIPV and BIWT is the Green Building, GB or environmental friendly buildings. In this paper, we are establishing a noval model that will lead to the encouragement of the establishment of BIPV or BIWT in Bahrain. The model will allow the indication of how much is the building and construction market is willing to be involved in BIPV or BIWT in Bahrain. This can be learnt from establishing a Sustainable Building Index (SBI) that we are going to derive and calculate for the rst time. The higher the SBI (larger than 0.5) the faster grow of sustainable buildings is expected. The model will lead to identifying the elements that may boost BIPV or BIPV in Bahrain (and probably to other countries) and pinpoints the elements that hurdle or decelerate the practice of sustainable building construction. 2. The model In our model, we will be dealing with a construction that is intended to use solar or wind energy to power part of electricity demand of a building in the kingdom of Bahrain. The model will make use of broad survey made by Cooke et al. [8]. We are looking for establishing SBI. Recently [9], a model was made that calculates two indexes which evaluate the utilization of Renewable energy (RE) in the design and development of green buildings. These are EQC introduced to describe the quality of energy and ECC intended to evaluate energy system efciency. The indexes and their expressions were developed based on energy analysis. Based on these two indexes, ESR was developed for the evaluation of RE utilization. Our model, to a certain extent, had taken similar mathematical approach to Xie et al.s model [9]. However, they were looking for

Fig. 2. The triangle of the sustainable development elements.

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Fig. 4. The mean features in BREEAM rating (a british scale for sustainable buildings or Eco Homes).

Table 1 The total numbers of criteria, prerequisites and credits in the green building rating (LEED) containing 6 environmental features with total score of 69 US LEED Sections to cover Sustainable sites Water efciency Energy and atmosphere Material and resources Indoor environmental quality Innovation and design TOTAL Total no: of criteria 15 5 20 14 17 5 76 No. of pre-requisites 1 0 3 1 2 0 7 No: of Credits 14 5 17 13 15 5 69

BIPV or BIWT falls within the feature known as Energy Efciency and Atmosphere which consist 20 criteria and has 17 credits.

evaluation methods to assess RE utilization in existing green building assessment systems represented by Americas LEED [10], Chinas GOBAS [11], Japans CASBEE [12] and the GBTools [13]. They applied their method of evaluation of renewable energy utilization on SHWS and GHPHWS in Beijing, China. Meanwhile, Cook et al.s paper [8] was dealing with answers from 8 different stakeholder groups within the UK to help with investigating their experiences of considering Alternative Energy Technologies (AET). 42 questions were selected from nearly 300 questions published by various researchers in this eld. These questions were extracted from several International research papers that reects the large and diverse number of barriers and drivers to AETs in different contexts; these are:  Lovins et al. [14] discuss 207 barriers to distributed energy generation.  Painuly [15], in his framework for identifying and addressing barriers to using renewables in developing countries, suggested 40 barrier elements within 7 categories.  Maldonado and Marquez [16] offered 4 main barrier categories related to use of renewables in Latin America: Market, Technological or R & D, Institutional and socio-economic.  Foxon et al. [17], using their framework for analyzing innovation, considered the factors affecting renewable energy in the UK from the evidence of gaps in the innovation chain, listing 4 risk factors and 6 other barriers. The descriptive ndings of Cook et al.s paper [8] highlighted the large number of factors that affect the chances of AETs in buildings (BIPV or BIWT) being deployed, the lack of experience and the lack of detailed approaches to options assessment. The output of their paper satised our models requirement, i.e. how to accelerate the use of BIPV or BIWT in building projects. Unfortunately, their study

was only qualitative investigation of building project stakeholders in the UK and not quantities as ours. They interviewed 41 personal having previous experience in AETs in building projects. About 8 different stakeholder groups (as shown in Table 2) were dened and representatives from each group were contacted within the UK to help with investigating their experiences of considering AETs. Our model is a novel mathematical formuli that calculates Sustainable Building Index SBI (or BIPV or BIWT Index). This index varies from 0.1 to 1.0. For SBI larger than 0.5 it means that there is a good chance to penetrate the building and construction sector for BIPV or BIWT projects, while for values less than 0.5 it is hard for this market to grow and the policy makers must work hard to eliminate the barriers and encourage further the drivers for sustainable building business. 3. Used drivers and barriers in the model We had used the most signicant Drivers and Barriers listed by Cook et al. [8]. The authors had ranked them in terms of how important they have been in practice and examined how this ranking can vary. To do this, each of the participants reected on
Table 2 Interview sample [8] Code A B C O P Q S T Stakeholder Architect Building services engineer Client Specialist consultant Planner Project manager/quantity surveyor Technology supplier Contractor Participants 5 6 5 5 5 5 5 5

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Fig. 5. The perceived nine important Drivers (D) for the use of alternative energy technologies in buildings used by Cook et al. [8]; which is used for our model. The median (triangle) is used to rate the importance factor ( f). Each factor f is given score from 1 to 9.

their own project experience and gave a score (between 1 and 10) for each list of common Drivers and Barriers. The results of these scores are summarized by Figs. 5 and 6, showing the maximum, minimum, interquartile ranges and median scores for each heading. The Drivers (D), which are 9, and the Barriers (B), which are 15, are tabulated in Table 3 according to their rating, i.e. low f is less signicant factor and high f is more signicant factor. 4. The mathematical formulae The Sustainable building index, SBI, can be calculated using the following relations: SBI sum of Drivers element0 s Score sum of Barriers element0 s Score

f is the rank of the element and S is the rank of the element jugded by the questionnairee; S = 1 for low, S = 2 for Medium and S = 3 for high. The constant (1.125) is an empirical constant. It is introduced to indicate that the maximum SBI is equal to 1.0 and the lowest is equal to 0.1, i.e. 0:1  SBI  1 This means that for successful development of sustainable building (BIPV or BIWT) for electrication of a building SBI should be more than 0.5. This model is novel. No published work had ever made this approach for perceiving quantitatively the use of solar and wind energy for electrifying the buildings. Furthermore, the model can be used for any country since the 9 Drivers (D) and the 15 Barriers (B), are common. The variation will be only in f and S values, i.e. low f and low S indicates less signicant factor and high f and S indicates more signicant factor. It has to be mentioned that these Drivers and Barriers were

Pn i Dx n P 1:125 n i Bx n Dx fxS; Bx fxS; SBI

f 1; 2; 3; . . . 9 f 1; 2; 3; . . . 15

Fig. 6. The perceived 15 important Barriers (B) to the use of alternative energy technologies in buildings used by Cook et al. [8]; which is used for our model. The median (triangle) is used to rate the importance factor ( f). Each factor f is given score from 1 to 9.

N.W. Alnaser et al. / Energy and Buildings 40 (2008) 20372043 Table 3 The Drivers (D) and Barriers (B) listed according to their rating (low f is less signicant importance factor and high f is more signicant importance factor) f 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Barriers High capital cost and long payback Ignorance and lack of understanding Perceived risk Unsuitable site Incoherent policy and planning constrains Unproven technology Maintenance Complexity Proximity and closeness to resource Variance Stubbornness of energy industry Communication and common language Environmental and ecological Impact Lead time in construction Design fee f 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Drivers

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Long-term economics Subsidies Image benet (show case) Environment Corporate sound responsibility (CSR) Policies Planning Lack of infrastructure Plant space

selected from a total of 400 which were extracted from many published papers. In fact, for countries that has no plan or regulation in constructing sustainable buildings the existing Ds and Bs stands valid and suitable and may require slight alteration in the phrasing. 5. The use of the model The model will help substantially in perceiving the acceptability of the players of the building construction sector (Stakeholders, Architects, Building Services Engineers, Clients, Specialist Consultants, Planner, Project managers/quantity surveyors, Technology Suppliers, and Contractors). These players have a great inuence on the policy and decision makers. If SBI is much less than 0.5 then policy and decision makers should expect that BIPV or BIWT projects will not be accelerated or popular. This is not due to technology but rather to cost ineffective; the investors may suffer high loss and subsequently the country will not witness further sustainable building projects even if a law was made because investors will shift there building construction projects to neighborhood countries to Bahrain. In fact, investors think rst on nancial revenue and second on environment. Failure of rst large scale BIPV or BIWT project will lead to a catastrophic practice of such sustainable building projects. For SBI equal to 0.5 or larger, there is a great chance for BIPV or BIWT projects to be successful. This is because that the Drivers are more than Barriers. However caution must be made and the policy and decision makers should offer special care. A success of such projects is a credit for the country in several ways, i.e. less CO2 emission, save of natural gas and use it for petrochemical industry instead of burning it to produce electricity, open new jobs in new technology, energy conservation, worldwide attraction, reducing global warming impact (at a long-term), international cooperation and use of CDM and better business in Carbon trading with the CER scheme. It is important that policy and decision makers work hard on improving S value (the rank of the element judged by the questionnaire) especially for elements having high f value in Drivers with low S. In contrast, they should work hard on reducing S values for elements having high f value in Barriers. This model can be international and can be adopted by international organization such as SBCI which was launched by United Nations. The investors can then refer to a special guide a look SBI and can afterward penetrate the market of Sustainable Building Construction successfully. They can also help other countries with low SBI to raise it up. This will lead to dissemination of worldwide sustainable building construction and hence cleaner

environment since the building construction take up 4050% of energy produced in a country. 6. Application of the model in Bahrain In our previous survey [15] we had consulted 18 largest in Bahrain in Architects, contractors (national and international) and engineers that are now in decision and policy-making position as well as top ofcials like undersecretaries and chairman of Bahraini Parliament. The average scores were deduced from our previous survey [18] and are shown in Table 4. Pn Pn The table indicates that i Dx n 125 and i Bx n 233. This means that SBI = 0.48. This means that we must make more propaganda and promotion to renewable energy Pn policy and P education. If we make n i Bx n reduced by half i Bx n 116 then SBI will be equal to 0.96. This means that BIPV or BIWT projects will be very successful. This model justies why we have to look seriously on making good policy for renewable energy or introduce LEED or BREEAM scheme in Bahrain or any other policy like introducing ESCo (Electricity service companies) which will be discussed below. We have to insist herein that our survey showed that the main barrier to construct sustainable buildings in Bahrain is the lack of incentives; high cost of PVs or wind turbines, maintenance and low nancial revenue from such project. This is because the cost of kWh of electricity (tariff) in Bahrain is only US cent 1 while it is US cent 11 in UK and US cent 22 in Japan. Therefore, there is no reason for investors to be engaged in BIPV or BIWT unless the tariff is raised up or strict building regulations are imposed in the energy side. The situation will be change in future because Bahrain, now, is looking for contracts with Iran and Qatar for natural gas supply with a cost of USD 3 to 5 per thousand m3 (1 m3 = 1000 British Thermal Unit, Btu) instead of the current sale to the government for electricity production (USD 1.5 per thousand m3). Ofcials had said that by 2012 the natural gas will be only available for domestic use. Meanwhile, the GCC countries are asked by UN to work hard in reducing CO2 per capita as they are ranked top worldwide. The Electricity Service Companies (ESCo) are becoming popular in Northern Ireland [19]. For clarity, we will use the European Union denition to ESCo which is a company that guarantees energy savings and/or the provision of the same level of energy service at a lower cost through the implementation of an energy efciency (or renewable energy project) and is rewarded based directly on the energy savings achieved. This is also known as Energy Performance Contracting. In ESCo system the companies take care of reducing the electricity bell in a construction for a customersay by 50%, in using PV or wind turbine. The customer

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Table 4 The scores of the Drivers (D) and the Barriers (B) along with S for each element f deduced from a survey made in the kingdom of Bahrain [18] D 27 24 21 18 10 12 9 2 2 S 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 1 2 f 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Drivers Long-term economics Subsidies Image benet (Show case) Environment Corporate sound responsibility (CSR) Policies Planning Lack of infrastructure Plant space B 45 42 13 12 11 20 27 24 7 6 5 8 9 2 2 S 3 3 1 1 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 2 3 1 2 f 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Barriers High Capital cost and long payback Ignorance and lack of understanding Perceived risk Unsuitable site Incoherent policy and planning constrains Unproven technology Maintenance Complexity Proximity and closeness to resource Variance Stubbornness of energy industry Communication and common language Environmental and ecological impact Lead time in construction Design fee

pays ESCo 90% of the saved cost. This makes the customer saving 10% of his bell. This will continue for an agreed period. This is a winwin scheme. 7. Signicance of the model We have herein found that there are many factors that inuence the BIPV in building projects, including nancial, political, technical and non-technical factors. Building consultants are limited in the inuence as they can have over some of these factors. They cannot change the cost of technologies or purchasing energy, neither can they directly change government policy, type of client and the building location. However, results from Cooks interviews [8] show that the building consultant still has a key role to play in advising clients and informing the decision making process. Very recently, Patlitzianas et al. [20] had made an integrated review of the methodologies and the related activities of the sustainable energy policy indicators and to recommend an operational framework of appropriate indicators supporting thus the policy makers/analysts/citizens towards a sustainable energy policy making. They ended up with the following sustainable framework: 1. Energy policy objectives: The sustainable energy policy making is directed by the objectives and priorities taking into consideration the impact of the specied characteristics in each country. Even if each state or geopolitical region has various energy policy objectives, depending on the level of economical growth as well as its status (importer, producer, exporter of energy), the three main European objectives are:  Security of supply  Competitiveness of energy market  Environmental protection 2. Selection criteria for indicators: A number of related energy indicators, apart from the technological and techno-physical, such as socioeconomic (e.g., employment, turnover) and R & D expenditures indicators are of critical relevance. 3. Recommended indicators: The energy policy making could be based on the following indicators for each one of the energy policy objectives.  Security of supply  Competitive energy market  Environmental protection According to Patlitzianas et al. [21] the development of renewable energy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

(Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates) has been relatively low in spite of the large geographical potential for the use of these solutions. This market has been stied by a combination of constraints, such as the absence of relative legal and policy framework, the high initial capital costs and the lack of commercial skills and information. Although, GCC countries have not been interested in these energy solutions for many years a change had occurred due to their accession to the Kyoto Protocol. The government, the private sector and the general public have started realizing the inevitability of putting climate change issues on the top of the list of priorities in the process of economic and social development. Apart from this, some renewable energy investments seem to be more available and effective solutions in the region, because of specied conditions and requirements in remote and isolated areas [21]. We had recently [22] listed several mechanism that may accelerate the construction of sustainable buildings or green buildings in the kingdom of Bahrain (which is may be applicable to all GCC countries). 8. Conclusion Our model allows developers, investors, architects, building contractors, environmentalist or policy makers to be able to evaluate the potential of the society to opt for BIPV or BIWT; a partial sustainable or green buildings. Several questions have to be answered that are Drivers (9 questions) and barriers (15 questions). Each question is given points according to its rank of signicance (based on Cooks et als survey [8] and a rate (low, medium and high). The model will lead to calculate SBI which range from 0.1 (lowest) to 1.0 (highest). This model was applied on Bahrain and the calculated SBI is 0.47. This means that an extensive effort must be made (through policies on renewable energy, education, incentives, environmental awareness and promotion of clean and sustainable energy for the construction. This model can be applied internationally to create a global SBI database. SBCI can take the task for establishing such database using this simple model. Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank the Royal Court, Kingdom of Bahrain, for their support to one of the authors (Alnaser, NW). References
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