Optimizing energy efficiency and thermal comfort of green envelope applications in hot arid climate

Abstract Climate change and unresolved environmental challenges in arid environments negatively affect urban development. Previous literature tackled the significance of ecological approaches and building envelope optimization as main pillars in reducing energy consumption and enhancing energy efficiency and thermal comfort in buildings. This study aims to tackle an environmental simulation of implementing green roofs and green walls as an ecological strategy applied to the building envelope with considerations of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) in contribution to enhancing the built environment’s energy efficiency and thermal comfort. The main study aimed to define the optimum solutions for applying ecological approaches on a medium office building envelope to investigate the enhancement of thermal comfort and total site energy. Hot arid climatic data was selected for its recent environmental challenges, and building envelope design, relying on experimental simulation research, a model was simulated using Design-builder software using discomfort hours and total site energy as the main objectives. Heating and cooling were added as outputs in the optimization to monitor their effect on the indoors. The two main output parameters were the WWR and envelope construction. Then a percentage decrease in the running cost was addressed. The multi-objective optimization showed an effective positive impact of green roof application on the building in hot arid climate than that of the green wall, which highlights the significance of green wall implementation to environmental and economic sustainable developments in arid environments.