World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Plataforma Edificación Passivhaus - Delegación Barcelona

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Micheel Wassouf

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The Passivehouse standard is a very successful concept of construction with very low energy consumption, and at the same time with reasonable additional construction-costs. Due to the urgent necessity of reducing CO2 emissions and the important weight of the building-responsible part of the Global Warming Potential (~30-40% of the energy consumption is generated by heating and cooling in buildings), the implementation of very low energy standards in construction is one of the most important issues against Climate Change. First buildings according to the Passivehouse-Standard were constructed almost 20 years ago in central Europe. In 2010, we count more than 12.000 Passivehouses all over the world. Due to a coherent and technical optimized ‘set of solutions’, this standard becomes even the reference of the future European Building standard-discussion in the European Parliament (see for example Energy performance of buildings (repeal. Directive 2002/91/EC). Recast ITRE/6/69835).All these buildings have a heating and cooling demand below 15+15 kWh/m2 and year. That means that they don’t need neither a traditional heating nor cooling system. Passivehouses furthermore assure a very high climate comfort and constructive quality of the buildings. The paper aims at showing first realized examples of constructed Passivehouses in the Mediterranean region (Italy and Spain) and to discuss the barriers and the stimulating factors of the implementation of this highly efficient building standard in these countries. Special focus will be given to the technical and sociological constraints of Passivehouse - Standard in Arab countries, and how a modified and adapted concept could help on introducing this concept in southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. The paper is structured in the following chapters:
a) Passivehouse, a brief explication of the standard
b) Historical background
c)Passivehouse in Mediterranean climate, first examples
d) Technical solutions for hot climates
e)Potential of CO2-reduction of Passivehouses
f) Passvehouse in arab countries - a proposal of an adapted concept Micheel Wassouf is funding member of the Spanish-Passivehouse association (www.plataforma-pep.org) and member of the association Rehabimed. He gives lectures in several schools (ICARO - IVAM / Escola Sert - CoAC) in Spain about Passivehouse standard. Born in Damascus, he has a special relationship to his native country. He is giving lectures in 2010 in the University of Damascus.