For the past two decades, the Egyptian government has worked feverishly to improve building energy efficiency and address green house gas emissions. The motivation for this effort has been the realization that population momentum would ultimately place enormous demands on all sectors of the Egyptian state and that these demands would have the potential to dramatically limit long term growth of the Egyptian economy. At the time, detailed studies had shown the close link between population growth and energy.

For that reason, Egyptian stakeholders and government officials have looked for methods to reduce power consumption and GHG emissions. In that sense, developing energy efficiency building codes was a critical first step in that process and identifying alternative paths towards energy efficiency has been a second.

Within the building sector, efforts at enforcement have been nonexistent. Proposals to improve performance in this area have been put forward but interest and manpower have been lacking. While many people are examining this dilemma others are searching for alternative systems to address the same issues and increase awareness regarding their importance.