Proceedings of the 2 nd World Congress on Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering (CSEE’17) Barcelona, Spain – April 2 – 4, 2017 Paper No. AWSPT 127 ISSN: 2371-5294 DOI: 10.11159/awspt17.127 AWSPT 127-1 Low Carbon Cooling Approach for the Residences in the UAE: A Case Study in Dubai Basim Touqan 1 , Hanan Taleb 2 , Muna Salameh 1, 3 1 Architecture and Sustainable Built Environment, British University in Dubai UAE 2014239094@student.buid.ac.ae2014139085@student.buid.ac.ae 2 Sustainable Design of Built Environment, British University in Dubai UAE hanan.taleb@buid.ac.ae 3 Ajman University UAE Abstract - Prior to the discovery of electrical power, the buildings in the UAE were built with a concentration on the passive designs in order to have daylight and natural ventilation as well as avoiding the undesired heat. The wind tower was considered as the most familiar cooling strategy followed in the traditional architecture. However, the advanced air conditioning systems of the present time have removed the need for the wind catchers since the indoor comfort could not be achieved enough by the wind towers and at the same level that advanced air conditioning systems can do. Despite the integration of the Green Buildings in UAE, the cheap energy prices and the poor attention to energy efficiency buildings have converted UAE to one of the top ten countries worldwide that have high electricity consumption per capita. This work offers a low carbon proposal to solve the problem and demonstrates three strategies that can be adopted in UAE to implement energy efficient buildings without compromising on the indoor comfort and air quality. IES VE and RETScreen software were used to simulate and analyse the proposed strategies. Using proper wall construction material that has minimum thermal transmittance value is one of the strategies that can be implemented to reduce the air-conditioning operating time thus less energy consumption. In addition to its benefits to the urban area, Green Roof is the second strategy that can be also implemented in order to reduce the thermal transmittance value of the roof. The last strategy is to employ Photovoltaic Panels to produce clean energy and to reduce the reliance on the fossil oil-generated power. As an overall, the bundle of three strategies has proved its efficiency to reduce the cooling energy consumption. The total electricity saving was 15.45 (MWh) and with a percentage of 19.6% of the total base case cooling power consumption. Keywords: Sustainability, Passive Cooling Strategies, Thermal Gain, Indoor Comfort, Energy Efficiency, UAE 1. Introduction The cooling approach in the past was focusing on keeping off the sun and using special stonework that has thermal inertia. In the hot and arid areas like UAE, the design, and the shape of the house in the past was dominated by the need for cooling and fresh air [1]. The buildings in UAE were built using the passive designs in order obtain ventilation and enough daylight with minimum heat from outdoors. Courtyards, least windows areas [2] and wind catchers [3] were a couple of passive cooling approaches used in UAE. Over the time, cooling methods have been developed significantly. The integration of effective air conditioning system started to show up only in the 1960s [1]. The main cooling methods used in the current time in UAE are the air condition systems employing advanced mechanical cooling technologies which led to eliminating some significant social and climatic architectural features such as courtyards and wind catchers so that they have been neglected in the new housing designs [4]. Problem Statement: The recent building design in Dubai has been impacted widely by the western urban designs. The facade with glazing was extensively used which significantly increased the rate of thermal gain inside the buildings. The insufficient building’s insulation and the more exposure to sun radiation resulted in more heat gains, thus more cooling energy consumption. On top of that, the energy prices in the region are cheap; this current overall situation has encouraged the integration of cooling systems that featured with high energy consumption. Although Dubai government has adopted