In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), buildings consume almost 90% of the total electricity used in the country. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of recent trends in energy consumption in the building sector as well as current efforts in promoting energy efficiency within UAE. Moreover, the paper explores available opportunities to improve energy efficiency of the UAE building sector. In particular, the impacts of three levels of energy retrofits are quantified based on results from existing literature and an optimization-based bottom-up analysis for residential, commercial, and governmental buildings. The analysis indicates that any level of energy retrofit for the existing building stock can be effective in reducing energy consumption and peak power demand as well as in lowering carbon emissions for UAE. It is estimated that a basic energy retrofit program applied to existing UAE building stock could achieve savings of 7550 GWh/year in electricity consumption, 1400 MW in peak electricity demand and reduce carbon emissions by 4.5 million tons/year per year. The program would have an average payback period of less than six months for the UAE government and would generate almost 9000 job-years. © 2017