When talking about the urban challenges we face today at a global level, population growth and urbanization ranks high in the charts. Both challenges can be found in the Middle East and especially in Dubai, one of the fastest growing cities in the world - a rapidly developing urban settlement supporting an ever-increasing human population. With a very warm climate, the United Arab Emirates are struggling to develop strategies and solutions to decrease energy consumption. Among the major consumers in Middle East are the building therefore an integrated approach using renewable sources is mandatory. Within the Solar Decathlon competition the Romanian team of students proposed a house prototype to answer Middle East challenges. In this paper we present the developed model, its structure, systems and we demonstrate its potential as a positive energy balance building using numerical simulations.

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The advantages of green roofs are well documented, ranging from heat island reduction, thermal comfort, air quality, stormwater management and energy savings for buildings. However, it has been shown that green roof retrofits are more effective in old, low efficiency buildings. This paper studies the possibility of retrofitting a high efficiency solar house with a green roof system being partially shaded, optimising its characteristics by means of parametric simulation. The input variables of the green roof system are: growth medium thickness, LAI (leaf area index) and height of plants. The output variables by which the different green roof systems are compared are: annual energy demand for heating and for cooling. The study concluded that the average reductions of energy consumption when retrofitting an efficient building with an extensive green roof are of 1.01% for heating and 4.61% for cooling, but optimising parameters (low LAI in winter, high LAI and height of plants in summer) can get reductions to 1.55% for cooling and 5.95% for cooling.

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