Extreme climatic conditions, a growing and young population and a renovation backlog present the entire Middle East with tremendous challenges when bringing existing housing up to standard and building new homes and offices. The main cause for high energy consumption is of course air conditioning, which accounts for over 55% of the large nation's demand. Different approaches are taken to address this loss of energy. The author tries to summarise the situation. There is a particular focus on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. EIFS (also called ETICS - External Thermal Insulation Composite Systems) were developed in ...