Water Wisdom

Despite the huge costs of delivering drinkable water to end users, water conservation in the GCC is still a long way from making a real impact.

Solar and green buildings
Solar panels are derided as gimmicks by experts on green buildings. To make a real impact, solar power generated on residential rooftops must be fed back into the grid. Abu Dhabi aims to do just that.

Critics argue that it is a misconception that the Middle East is a natural home for solar power, just as it is that solar panels can substantially reduce the energy gain of a building.

Solar may help boost a building’s green credentials, but in terms of energy saving there are far better options available, they say.

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On a large scale residential or office building, even covering the entire façade with solar photo-voltaic panels will likely only succeed in providing two percent of energy needs, says Nicholas Lander, senior associate at Inhabit.

The real drain on most office developments is lighting, which can account for up to 50 percent of a building’s total power output.

“If you are looking at a small building with no local power access then PV panels can be an excellent source of power for the building. But if you are talking about commercial, PV panels are only useful as part of large scale power plants,” he told the Architect Middle East magazine in July.

It is not that solar panels are inherently useless, if every home was to install them the effect could be dramatic, but currently there is little financial incentive to do so.

This problem has been identified by the Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (ADDC), who are about to launch the Solar Rooftop Programme (SRP). The programme aims to install a total capacity of 500MW of solar power in small-scale application on private homes by 2030, and feed excess capacity into the grid.

At the same time, it will provide financial incentives to households who install solar panels, the ADDC have said on its website.

While the company has not provided details on these incentives, they could involve a variation of feed-in tariffs, a form of renewables subsidy practiced by countries around the world.

Nick Carter, director general of the Abu Dhabi Regulation & Supervision Bureau announced in June that Abu Dhabi would be paying the operators of solar plants the differential between the cost of production and the retail price for electricity.

Green Hotels
The hotel industry is starting to cater for to the green awareness of its clientele. Hotels are massive consumers of both water and electricity. But travellers’ increasing awareness of green issues has encouraged hotels to adopt a more eco-friendly approach to business.

So now is the time for hoteliers to improve on their hotel’s eco-credentials, writes Harriet Sinclair from Hotelier Middle East.

And there are simple steps that can make a significant difference. Improving the eco-credentials of a hotel can be done without resorting to a complete overhaul of the buildings system, says Louis Hakim, chairman of Philips Middle East, who highlights the benefits of energy efficient lighting.

“LED bulbs use 20 percent of the power of a current incandescent bulb and last up to 25,000 hours, compared with 1,000 hours for a standard bulb.” Tarek Zakaria, intelligent building system manager at ABB says that going green can have several desirable effects.

“Many guests want companies to promote the ‘go green’ initiative by adopting solutions that would increase comfort and also have less impact on our environment,” says Zakaria.

“A second reason why we do believe people care, even indirectly, is because of cost. If a hotel is saving 30 percent on energy costs they could pass those savings on to the customer. It doesn’t take much to work out that people will be happier if the cost of a service is reduced,” adds Zakaria.

While existing hotels can benefit from new technology, new hotels have the opportunity to integrate the green-ethos in to their building on a much larger scale.

“Hoteliers may be coming in to green projects a little late. Often how green a hotel can be is decided from the blue-print stage. That is when we need to be getting involved and looking at being a green hotel,” says cluster director of technology for Mövenpick, Issam Abbas.