Earth Sheltered Housing: An Approach to Energy Conservation in Hot Arid Areas

The world's "energy crisis" goes far deeper than being simply a shortage of fossil fuels. The crisis is generated by the reluctance to adopt the use of innovative and less energy consuming solutions for human settlements. A striking example is the large number of new cities and other major urban and rural developments in the Arab world. Despite the enormous repertory of solutions and our knowledge of heat recovery processes, insulation techniques, simple orientation, treatment of building elevations, size of elevations, size of windows, shading devices, building materials and methods of construction, energy in these developments continues to be used wastefully in a very extensive way. This is due to the questionable performance of imported lightweight materials such as metal, timber, asbestos, plastics, rubber, glass and asphalt which are increasingly used in the hot, arid, oil-rich Arab countries. When mechanical cooling and ventilation becomes a necessity, pollution hazards and health problems are then inevitable. Energy plan- ning can improve the quality of our life and the environment in our new devel