The importance of adopting a sustainability assessment tool for public building projects from environmental challenges perspective in Saudi Arabia

A new generation of sustainability assessment systems, especially for developing countries, is developed to integrate differences in regional, social, cultural, environmental and economic aspects, Likewise, the Saudi Arabia (SA) possess its unique local context, political and societal features. Consequently, the concept of sustainable development has been included in the Saudi government’s Vision 2030 to progress sustainability goals and bring the country into a more a sustainable lifestyle. And where, no dedicated sustainability weighting system currently exists for Saudi buildings. The key objective of this paper is to determine the main environmental challenges facing Saudi Arabia and illustrate the importance of developing a sustainability weighting method to evaluate public building environmental performance to minimize the environmental damage, enhance the sustainability of the built environment, and protect natural resources, due to the dramatic increase in carbon emissions CO2, energy and water consumption and materials depletion in SA’s construction industry. The outcome might encourage Saudi government to develop a comprehensive environmental assessment tool suits the local Saudi context, as the SA doesn’t have its own evaluation benchmark up till now. Whereas using existing assessment tools could not reflect the exact building environmental performance, particularly by reviewing five existing sustainability weighting systems, LEED, BREEAM, PBRS, GSAS and Green Star in the light of an analysis study to three main sustainability categories which represents energy consumption, water efficiency and materials.