Preparations are underway in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt for the hosting of the COP27 climate conference, launching on Sunday November 6th. Under its strapline ‘Together for implementation,’ COP27 is billed as an ‘African COP’ due to an expectation that the exposure of African countries to climate change will play a significant role in the event.

The event follows one year after COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, which, as we wrote at the time, “left many architects to ponder how effective the mostly non-representative group of negotiators were in addressing the skepticism and high expectations coming into the meeting that is meant to address what is undoubtedly the greatest moral issue of our time.”

One architect who will hope for a more optimistic verdict on COP27 is Sarah El Battouty. The Egyptian architect and entrepreneur, who directs the leading Egyptian green architecture firm ECOnsult, was recently appointed as a global ambassador with the UNFCCC, the UN body which manages the COP series. She was also commissioned by the Egyptian government to design the country’s pavilion at COP27.

In a recent profile in the Middle Eastern outlet The National, El Battouty described how her company grew from an unlikely female-led operation in a male-dominated industry to become one of the leading voices in sustainability across the Middle East.

El Battouty launched ECOnsult in 2013, opting to grow a risky green architecture venture rather than joining her family’s architecture firm, which stretched back four decades.

“When we started, no bank, institution, university, lender, or venture capitalist would even consider supporting a green building company like ours,” El Battouty told The National. “Let alone one owned by a woman, with over half of its staff being women who are receiving equal pay to their male counterparts.”

El Battouty ultimately funded the company’s launch by selling her car and saw steady growth through engagement on small, medium, and large-scale projects in Egypt and abroad.

“We didn’t bother with trying to enter the right scene or making our company cool or trendy,” El Battouty told The National. “We also didn’t really know the value of branding and speaking events and all that. We really were singularly focused on our mission, which has always been to deliver affordable green solutions on buildings.”

Among the projects fuelling ECOnsult’s rise was a café in Palma, Italy, made almost entirely from refrigerator casings, and a residential village in Egypt that used air-flow manipulation and solar panels to enable a 10°C reduction in indoor temperatures even during the hot Egyptian summers.

“Early on, we’d approach a business or government entity with an offer to reduce their energy costs by 20 percent, and we’d get that done,” El Battouty noted. “After being hesitant to work with us, they began to trust us more. So it got to the point where clients were approaching us and asking us to build larger and larger projects.”

Today, with a reduction in energy subsidies from the Egyptian government, the country is increasingly seeing a transition to green energy. As COP27 descends on the country, El Battouty has struck an optimistic note, seeing the event as an opportunity to encourage more women to venture into green enterprise.

You can learn more about the role of COP conferences in addressing climate change in the built environment by following our news and feature coverage.