The first most obvious thing to get out of the way: The Arabic sustainable standard cannot be the same as the European sustainable standard. While Europe might be grappling with increasing temperatures, our temperatures have always been high to begin with. The intention should be to better the overall quality of air, life, and to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels for most energy generation. Maybe even all, if it can be helped. And so, when I think of sustainability, I don’t think about net-zero, not for our region.

One of the more obvious things after my dad’s passing that I’ve had to grapple with is basically taking over all of the stuff and ensuring that everything’s well-managed and provided for. Like we live in a villa, of course, and all the air conditioning has to work and the electrics have to stay on and the water’s gotta keep flowing and so on. And one thing that’s been bugging me in the back of my mind are the failure points of all the related supporting devices, the quality of the water, and the dizzying DEWA bill that, during the summer, crosses the 6,000 dirham threshold. I am incensed. I mean, I’m not surprised. But what an immense waste of resources. And so one of my thoughts for next year is figuring out how to resolve all these issues and I’ve broken them down into several camps that I’m blueprinting and wanted to share my thoughts.

First of all, the idea that we should live sustainably (in the traditional sense) is cute, if a little ridiculous. Cooling a home in the desert during a summer that now breaks 50 degrees, whether anyone will acknowledge it or not, basically requires that you are unsustainable. But the real loss with cooling is that when we do cool our homes, we just dump all this energy into the air. It should surprise few people that covering many of our buildings in glass means that the amount of heat being dumped at any one time is immense and where does indoor heat go through the magic of air conditioning’s heat transfer coils? The outside air. I imagine most people don’t really think about how air conditioning works and just chalk it up to technological magic but the actual principle of how this works is very interesting and I recommend everyone check out the scientific and engineering wizardry that allows this to happen. It is very reasonable to believe that if we can improve our heat dumping then we can definitely bring down the outside air temperature but this will require a lot of planning across many different aspects of society in order to achieve a lower overall temperature in a country that almost has too many people for its own environmental good. But on a home-by-home basis, changes can definitely be made to make this whole process more efficient and I think I’m going to spend a bit more time to devise a working plan for this and then apply it.

Every home needs clean sweet water, hot sweet water, electricity, resistance to immediate heat incident points, robust filtration, and protection of all failure points from the immense heat and dusty weather, which has only gotten worse as time has gone on. A home should also be considered sustainable by the amount of overall heat it dumps into the air. The solution is almost too obvious.

Air conditioning stands to be much more efficient if rather than dumping heat into the air, the heat is first used to heat up the water in the hot water tank, which should be fed by the chiller. The chiller actually solves another problem because the cold water tap typically gives searing hot water for the first few minutes that that tap is open during the summer. And of course, using the handheld bidet in the summer is an experience I don’t need to recount to anyone. This damn water needs to be chilled. On top of all of this, the water that we receive should be filtered and drinkable. It would be very nice to shower in water that superstitiously will stop contributing to my increasingly bald and shiny head that everyone seems to enjoy teasing me about. Sweetening the pH of the water also means that solubles like soap will take to the skin better and the gentleness of this water will likely be a boon for everyone living in the house. And while you’re already sweetening the water, why not also mineralize it so you can sometimes take a drink while in the shower or at the tap after brushing your teeth? It’ll also decrease piping issues and reduce rust forming at the tips of the shower heads and at pipe joint points. Overall, it’s a good idea to do this. Because, sure, the water use itself might not change but why have all of it go to waste? If you can drink from the tap, wash from the tap, and have ready temperatures of water at the tap, you might actually reduce your usage? I know I’ve left the water running one too many times just so the temperature stabilizes to even allow me to enter the shower. Unsustainable. Moving on to the biggest consumer of energy…

Air conditioning systems consume so much more energy in the summer because the outside air is already hot. If typically the heat exchange is between two points that are at 50 degrees outside and zero degrees inside, then you’re asking the air conditioner to operate at its near-theoretical maximum. The weather is simply too hot. And the beating sun and albedo radiation is not helping it either. And so the air conditioner drones in pain as it manages to complete its exchange and the thermostat needs to be set ever so lower to achieve the same results that it would be able to achieve in a climate where the maximum temperature doesn’t break the very low 40 degrees. And so the air conditioner itself must be helped with shade and some sort of primitive cooling. The final issue we have is one of filtration. The air conditioners can get especially filthy and once they do, the blowers are going to carry the dust and grime inside. Yes, the filters are still keeping most of the dirt out, but at some point, you’re once again asking too much of these machines.

And so, we come to the plan.

First off, the entire area that spans the air conditioning units must be covered in perpetual shade. Once covered, the covering is sealed on all sides by a mesh that allows air to flow freely but that also acts as a first barrier for dust and grime. Meaning, rather than washing the air conditioning filters directly, we wash the mesh that surrounds the whole area of the air conditioning units. The air conditioners are then all hooked up to a special heat exchange controller where all heat is transferred to a hot water tank. Once sent to the hot water tank, the controller will switch back to dumping heat to the air once the hot water is at the desired temperature. While this would be wasteful in other countries, here it would not be such a big issue because you actively want to avoid dumping hot air from your home as it hurts the overall environment. Trapping the heat in water is a net positive on the society and on the overall pleasantness of the climate, which in this case takes precedent over traditional sustainability. And this mesh guard for the air conditioners? You cover it in solar panels. And you cover the garage in solar panels. And you cover the service area in solar panels. And! You cover your windows in solar panels.

So earlier, I said you have to reduce the heat incident points in the home. That means windows. Even with double-glazed vacuum windows, you’re still letting in a surprising amount of heat. Walk up to your window and hover your hand over it. Or just touch the window. Warm, right? How do you account for this? Drapes, curtains, and a shade outside that stops the sunlight from directly hitting the window proper. And while you’re at it, make it a solar panel; An elegant-looking solar panel, to be sure, but a source of energy nonetheless. Couple the solar panels with a power management system and some batteries to level out the electricity and you’ve got yourself a solid source of electricity that, even if it doesn’t take the full load off your house, will at least remove the heavy cost of the air conditioners from your bill.

Air conditioning consumes up to 70% of the UAE’s electricity capacity. It is a behemoth requirement for this country and one that is so deeply unconsidered. (Long note: This is why I said earlier that net-zero is not something I think is even possible. Solar on every home is not going to cut it when you’re cooling basically everything. Energy is simply a necessity of living. And we need plenty of it.) Electric cars are helping nobody when the air conditioning inside of the car is constantly dumping heat. Multiply that by millions of cars and millions of homes and thousands of hotel rooms and countless little security rooms, warehouses, and all sorts of buildings and you don’t have just a pollution problem, you have a heat problem. And this needs to be solved. Whether by finding new ways to use that heat before releasing it into the air or by figuring out ways to dump it underground or by creating large heat-soaking points in buildings that will reduce the rate at which heat is released into the air. It’s a big problem and a big factor that contributes to why living here during the summer is so miserable. And everyone will remember from their childhoods that it wasn’t like this. And even on the hottest of summer days, going somewhere that isn’t so filled with buildings is relatively pleasant. It’s not great, but it’s definitely better than the misery of the inner cities.

Keeping the energy in the home for as long as possible and supplementing the main energy draw with renewables while cleaning up your pipes, your water, and your air filtration will go a long way to improving the overall quality of living in the city. And I’m going to try doing all of this next year. I hope I’ll have a nice update to share when all of this is over.