This article discusses the design of a very low energy residential building, with regard to the climate of New Borg El Arab City (NBC). However, since the cost of a very energy efficient building can be high, two investment scenarios, low (LIS) and high (HIS) investments, have been considered. In the first case, the design includes exclusively low cost solutions, while in the second case technologies commonly associated with Net zero houses are included. Both cases have been compared to a reference case, called business as usual (BaU), which refers to the minimum requirements of the Egyptian energy code. The final energy consumption of LIS has been estimated around 15 kWh/m(2), which is half of the final energy consumption of the Bali building. Particularly interesting are the results of HIS: the final energy consumption varies from 5 kWh/m(2) to 1.48 kWh/m(2) and to 0.69 kWh/m(2) as the PV size increases. Very low energy and net zero energy buildings have been designed in line with the local context, using envelope solutions to lower their energy needs and renewable systems to achieve a near zero or a negative final energy balance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.