Buildings are responsible for at least 40% of energy use in most countries. In Egypt, energy use in
buildings has grown in the last 20 years mainly due to the increases of population, number of households, as well
as increase in service demand, such as more air conditio
ners, more computers, and
larger houses. Therefore,
various improved technology, such as energy efficien
t building shells, appliances, and building designs, are
strongly expected to control energy consumption in residence and commercial sectors.
Meanwhile, Low Carbon Building technol
ogies can be classified into th
ree key areas: building materials,
renewable energy for buildings and building design. These technologies are relevant for all residential,
commercial and industrial buildings. They are relevant for new as well as retrofitted existing buildings.
Under these circumstances, the main goal of this paper is to develop a practical platform for applying the key of
building material to improve the building energy efficiency in Egypt. Eventually, the research discusses the
following objectives:

The past experience of vernacular architecture.

Whether there are signi
fi
cant differences in initial embodied energy
of different building material in two
residential buildings.
The comparison between the vernacular
and the modern examples in thei
r building materials, can achieve a
satisfactory result on reducing (59,77%) of the total CO2 emissions. Vernacular buildings require similar
amounts of energy and result in similar levels of CO2 emissions, both being much more than the equivalent
values for modern building.