Towards clean energy transition. An exploratory case study from rural Egypt

first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon. Open AccessArticle Towards Clean Energy Transition: An Exploratory Case Study from Rural Egypt by Ahmed Abouaiana 1,*ORCID andAlessandra Battisti 2ORCID 1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Sinai University, Kantara Branch, Ismailia 41636, Egypt 2 Department of Planning, Design, and Technology of Architecture, Sapienza, University of Rome, Via Flaminia 72, 00196 Rome, Italy * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Sustainability 2025, 17(4), 1597; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17041597 Submission received: 27 December 2024 / Revised: 22 January 2025 / Accepted: 24 January 2025 / Published: 14 February 2025 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energies in the Built Environment) Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down Review Reports Versions Notes Abstract Rural areas are ideal for renewable energy facilities, supporting sustainable development and energy transition. Egypt aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity sector by 37% and energy consumption by 17% by 2030. Rural Egypt, hosting two-thirds of the population and building stock, consumes one-third of the total electricity. Thus, this paper provides an exploratory study to diagnose and benchmark the energy-use intensity of rural buildings and quantify the correlation between residential electricity consumption, built environment elements, and socio-economic factors, in addition to promoting techno-economic assessments of renewable energy from photovoltaic panels in rural Egypt, supporting national policies amid rapid rural development. The study utilized different analytical and field methods and statistical analyses. A typical agriculture-based rural village in the Delta region, northern Egypt, was selected; the built environment, building types, and socio-economic factors were examined. The results revealed a significant correlation between lifestyle, built-up area, household size, and floor numbers with residential buildings’ electricity consumption. The average annual electricity use intensity was benchmarked at 2.5–92.3 kWh/m2 for six non-residential building typologies and at 22 kWh/m2 and 6.67 kWh/dwelling for residential buildings. Under current regulations, rooftop solar panels can generate electricity significantly, but are not profitable. Eventually, insights for policymakers to inform energy transition policies and national initiatives for rural regeneration were provided. The research focused on a local context, but the methodology can be applied to rural settlements in similar contexts.