Thermal Comfort Meets ESG Principle: A Systematic Review of Sustainable Strategies in Educational Buildings

Abstract

Securing thermal comfort while minimizing energy consumption in educational buildings is vital for achieving sustainable development goals. Drawing on the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework, this systematic review synthesizes findings from 84 peer-reviewed studies published over the past decade, with a focus on how thermal comfort and energy use are assessed in educational contexts. The review identifies three primary research themes: climate resilience, multidimensional human-centric design, and energy decarbonization. However, it also reveals that existing studies have placed disproportionate emphasis on the environmental dimension, with insufficient exploration of issues related to social equity and governance structures. To address this gap, this study introduces an ESG-driven theoretical framework encompassing seven dimensions: thermal environment stability, multimodal thermal comfort assessment integration, sustainable energy use, heterogeneous thermal demand equality, passive–active design synergy, participatory thermal data governance, and educational thermal well-being inclusivity. By fostering interdisciplinary convergence and emphasizing inclusive stakeholder engagement, the proposed framework provides a resilient and adaptive foundation for enhancing indoor environmental quality in educational buildings while advancing equitable climate and energy strategies.

1. Introduction

As global climate change accelerates and energy demands continue to rise, the building sector is facing mounting and unprecedented challenges. According to projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global temperatures may increase by over 1.5 °C between 2021 and 2040 [1], In response, the United Nations (UN) introduced the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles [2] to guide efforts toward mitigating climate impacts. As a result, ensuring thermal comfort in buildings has evolved from being merely a technical issue to becoming a foundational requirement for advancing human well-being and achieving sustainable development goals. Educational buildings serve as essential living and learning spaces throughout young people’s developmental years, influencing not only their health and cognitive performance but also the formation of long-term behavioral patterns [3,4,5,6,7,8]. With dense occupancy and extended use durations, educational buildings place particularly high demands on the stability of indoor thermal conditions. Recent research increasingly suggests that indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and thermal comfort may exert a greater influence on user performance than individual characteristics such as psychological disposition or work attitude, and even surpass the role of broader social environmental factors [9,10,11,12]. Despite this growing recognition, ESG-oriented research and industry practice continue to prioritize commercial and office buildings, often overlooking the unique challenges and societal importance of educational settings [13]. Moreover, attempts to maintain optimal indoor thermal conditions in such contexts have often come at the cost of excessive energy consumption, running counter to the sustainability goals embedded in ESG principles. In response to this tension, this review introduces ESG principles as a relevant and conceptually consistent perspective in the study of thermal comfort. Although not yet systematically adopted in this field, core ESG values such as human well-being, sustainable development, and climate resilience are increasingly reflected in emerging research. This review therefore positions ESG principles both as a theoretical framework and as a forward-looking research agenda to support the evolution of thermal comfort studies in educational buildings. To align thermal comfort with ESG principles, researchers must address the underlying technical and systemic challenges of energy consumption [14,15], enabling more holistic strategies that integrate human well-being and sustainability.

While ESG principles have been widely adopted in finance, governance, and environmental management, their incorporation into the built environment, especially in educational settings, remains underdeveloped. However, the core values of ESG principles, including human well-being, sustainable development, and climate change, are intrinsically aligned with the goals of thermal comfort research. Recent developments in architecture and building science have begun to examine these convergences, particularly in fields such as health equity, decarbonization strategies, and climate-adaptive design. This review not only synthesizes the current state of thermal comfort research in educational buildings but also reframes its central themes through an ESG-informed lens to bridge environmental performance with user-centered priorities.

The ESG principle emphasizes five interrelated dimensions: human well-being, sustainable development, climate change, public goods, and corporate governance. Drawing on a comprehensive review of thermal comfort studies in educational buildings, this paper proposes three ESG-aligned focal areas: Climate resilience refers to the ability of buildings to sustain indoor comfort in the face of climate variability and extreme weather. Multidimensional human-centric design emphasizes responsiveness to the physiological, psychological, and social needs of building users. Energy decarbonization aims to reduce the use of carbon-intensive energy sources while maintaining consistent indoor comfort standards. These three areas are consistently identified as key concerns across the literature on thermal comfort in educational buildings, representing both prevailing research directions and frequently cited priorities. They therefore serve as the analytical framework guiding this review’s exploration of ESG-driven strategies for the future design of educational spaces [2]. As defined by the IPCC, climate resilience refers to the ability of social, economic, and environmental systems to withstand and adapt to climate-related events and long-term trends [1]. In the context of educational buildings, this concept captures the capacity to adjust to climatic variability, alleviate the effects of extreme weather, and simultaneously maintain optimal indoor environmental conditions. Multidimensional human-centric design highlights the importance of tailoring building environments to occupants’ physiological, psychological, and social needs. Energy decarbonization focuses on reducing energy consumption throughout the building supply chain while preserving baseline thermal comfort standards. In educational contexts, this includes minimizing energy use associated with high-demand systems such as HVAC, lighting, and other operational infrastructure, while ensuring that minimum thresholds for indoor thermal comfort are consistently upheld. These three thematic directions provide the analytical basis for this review, which synthesizes a decade of research to explore sustainable and well-being-oriented design pathways for educational buildings.

Since 2014, an increasing number of review articles have addressed the indoor thermal environment and energy consumption in educational buildings (see

Table 1. Recent reviews on indoor thermal environments in educational buildings.

Author	Concentration	Year	Key Finding
[16]	Energy consumption	2014	The building energy consumption requirements vary depending on the educational level and size of the school. The energy consumption for the standard educational function (teaching) in educational buildings should be analyzed separately from specialized facilities or functions (such as swimming pools).
[20]	Thermal comfort	2016	Both indoor and outdoor climates influence human adaptability. Many current thermal comfort standards are unsuitable for classroom evaluations.
[19]	Methodology	2019	The presented comfort data collection method is suitable for diverse school contexts. Integrating physical, environmental, and dynamic simulation data offers a holistic view of conditions.
[18]	Analysis of the thermal response and long-term comfort indices	2020	Bioclimatic buildings are more affected by external climate than mechanically conditioned ones. Sunspaces’ temperatures are heavily influenced by external conditions; opening intermediary windows allows thermal energy to benefit occupied areas.
[17]	Ventilation	2023	The review guided the creation of a low-energy ventilation system. Combining multiple passive techniques can overcome single-method limitations.
[21]	Influence on student’s learning progress	2023	Stimulating attention and concentration early on is vital for brain development. Collaborations with education and neuropsychology experts can provide diverse learning measurement perspectives.
[23]	Indoor thermal environment, human-centered design	2025	Examining current methodologies and optimization strategies for designing indoor thermal environments in educational buildings. Advocating for more adaptable and sustainable thermal environment strategies.

). While some reviews have emphasized energy efficiency [16,17], they often fail to incorporate user comfort, personal variability, and environmental dynamics [18,19]. Others have examined the influence of thermal design strategies on learning outcomes and cognitive development [9,18,20,21,22]. Additional studies have focused on assessment methodologies for thermal environments, contributing to the technical foundations of indoor environmental evaluation in educational settings [17,19]. Although these efforts are closely related to sustainable development and human well-being [10,20,23], to date, no review has provided a systematic synthesis explicitly framed within the ESG principle.

This review advances an ESG-driven framework for achieving sustainable, affordable, and reliable thermal comfort in educational buildings. Anchored in the three pillars of climate resilience, multidimensional human-centric design, and energy decarbonization, it synthesizes and critiques a decade of research to identify current limitations and chart future directions for both research and practice. The discussion is further situated within the broader ESG landscape, which encompasses human well-being, sustainable development, climate change, public goods, and corporate governance, in order to propose a conceptual model of thermal comfort tailored to educational contexts. By integrating these perspectives, this review offers strategic insights for improving indoor environments in schools, enhancing student experience, and informing responses to global environmental and energy challenges.

2. Review Methodology

To critically evaluate the current state of research on indoor thermal comfort and energy consumption in educational buildings, this review adopts a structured and transparent methodological framework designed to identify prevailing strengths, limitations, and future research priorities.

2.1. PRISMA for Literature Retrieval

This study adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, a widely recognized approach for conducting systematic literature reviews. The review process followed four sequential stages: identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and inclusion. This ensured a rigorous, transparent, and replicable selection procedure based on clearly defined criteria.

2.2. Identification

The identification stage involved a systematic literature search using ScienceDirect as the primary database. The search strategy was constructed using Boolean operators to balance precision and comprehensiveness. The final query string was as follows: (“educational building” OR “school facility” OR “school architecture”) AND (“indoor thermal environment” OR “thermal comfort”) AND (“student performance” OR “|energy consumption”) NOT “urban microclimate”. The selection of search operators was driven by the need to target studies that explicitly connect indoor thermal conditions to the functional outcomes of educational buildings, such as energy use and student outcomes. Synonyms like “school facility” and “school architecture” were included to broaden coverage across disciplines and regional terminologies. The exclusion of “urban microclimate” was intended to avoid studies focusing on outdoor or neighborhood-scale phenomena, which fall outside the scope of this review. To be included in this review, the studies had to meet the following criteria: (1) peer-reviewed articles published in English; (2) articles in the fields of engineering, architecture, or environmental building science; (3) publications between January 2014 and December 2024. A total of 904 articles were retrieved through this initial identification step.

2.3. Document Screening, Eligibility, and Included

A total of 904 articles were retrieved from the ScienceDirect database. The screening process followed the PRISMA framework, comprising identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and inclusion. As illustrated in Figure 1, initial screening was conducted based on titles, keywords, and abstracts, ensuring the presence of terms such as school architecture OR educational building OR school house OR school building OR school facility OR school-houses AND thermal AND energy consumption. Boolean operators “AND” and “OR” were applied to refine the selection. This stage yielded 264 potentially relevant records.

To enhance transparency in the screening process, we explicitly define the following inclusion and exclusion criteria applied during the PRISMA-based review. The inclusion criteria are as follows: (1) peer-reviewed journal articles published in English between 2014 and 2024; (2) studies explicitly focused on indoor thermal environments in educational buildings, including schools, colleges, or universities; (3) articles addressing thermal comfort, energy consumption, or both, with an emphasis on strategies for optimization; (4) interdisciplinary studies incorporating thermal comfort alongside other indoor environmental variables (e.g., indoor air quality), provided they maintained a clear thermal comfort component. The exclusion criteria include the following: (1) articles focusing exclusively on non-thermal environmental factors (e.g., acoustic, air, or visual comfort), unless directly linked to thermal comfort; (2) studies solely addressing COVID-19-related ventilation interventions without a thermal comfort perspective; (3) conference abstracts, editorial notes, or grey literature; (4) duplicates and studies unrelated to educational settings despite overlapping keywords.

While the central focus of this review lies in educational buildings, the final compilation of 84 studies reflects a broader thematic scope. It includes research directly addressing educational settings, such as thermal comfort assessments and energy retrofits in primary schools, secondary schools, and universities, as well as studies exploring thermal modeling and simulation tools applied in educational contexts. To capture recent advances in evaluation methodology and ensure a forward-looking perspective, including dynamic models grounded in the PMV model and machine learning-based frameworks, the review intentionally maintained this broader inclusion criterion. This decision was made with the understanding that these evolving techniques are increasingly being adapted to the operational and design challenges specific to educational buildings.

This study adopts a broad definition of “educational building” to encompass facilities primarily dedicated to teaching and learning activities. This includes schools, colleges, and university buildings, with an emphasis on classrooms and other instructional spaces. Although certain studies explicitly focus on specific age groups or educational stages, such as kindergartens, primary schools, or university lecture halls, a significant portion of the literature does not specify user demographics or the level of education addressed. Consequently, no exclusion criteria were applied based on student age or institutional level. University offices and administrative areas were included in the analysis only when their thermal comfort conditions were directly linked to educational environments.

2.4. Preliminary Analysis Results

A preliminary bibliometric analysis was conducted based on the methodology outlined above [13,17,22,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104], with results summarized in Figure 2. Among the 84 studies reviewed, the most frequently occurring keywords were “thermal comfort” (22%), “energy consumption” (17%), “educational building” (14%), and “sustainable development” (6%). As shown in Figure 3, this analysis was further extended to examine the relationships between keywords. Given the intrinsic link between thermal comfort and thermal loads, energy consumption has become a recurring research priority. Although the categories used in Figure 3 draw on thematic terms commonly found in the literature, such as thermal assessment and energy performance, they also align with broader ESG objectives, including sustainable development and human well-being. However, it is important to recognize that most current studies on thermal comfort in educational buildings have not yet integrated the ESG framework in a systematic manner within their conceptual foundations or keyword classifications. At this stage, organizing studies strictly according to ESG dimensions would be premature and may not reflect the internal logic of existing research. As a transitional strategy, Figure 3 introduces a classification system grounded in prevailing research domains, establishing a conceptual bridge toward the ESG-based synthesis developed later in Section 5.1. In many cases, efforts to improve thermal comfort directly involve energy use, particularly in evaluating design strategies or operational performance, thereby reinforcing the relevance of energy consumption in this research landscape. The literature reviewed spans the period from 2014 to 2024, chosen to reflect the trajectory of thermal comfort research since the global adoption of ESG principles in 2015. Over this decade, a steady rise in scholarly output has been observed, with notable peaks in 2021 and 2023. This upward trend corresponds with growing concerns over climate change and volatile energy markets, both of which have intensified the pursuit of adaptive and energy-efficient building solutions. In the wake of COVID-19, rising expectations for IEQ have further fueled this momentum. The widespread adoption of ESG principles has also positioned sustainable development as a central benchmark for policy and investment, accelerating the adoption of green and energy-conscious practices in educational building design. In terms of geographical distribution, the majority of reviewed studies originate from Europe and East Asia, while contributions from Africa, Central Asia, and South America remain comparatively limited. This imbalance suggests that disparities in infrastructure and access to climate data may hinder the generalizability of current research outcomes across different regions.

Notably, keywords such as “sustainable development,” “climate change,” and “human well-being”, as highlighted in Figure 2, are directly aligned with the ESG principle. Since 2017, interest in ESG applications within educational settings has gained significant traction, likely catalyzed by the release of the 2015 ESG standards. As ESG frameworks become increasingly embedded in institutional and corporate strategies, the development of a corresponding thermal comfort model represents not only an academic endeavor, but also a broader response to societal and industry imperatives. On this basis, the remainder of this review is structured as follows:

(1)

A critical review of current research on thermal comfort and energy consumption in educational buildings, organized around three ESG-driven dimensions: climate resilience, multidimensional human-centric design, and energy decarbonization;

(2)

The development of a theoretical framework for thermal comfort under the ESG principle, incorporating five core dimensions: climate change, human well-being, sustainable development, public goods, and corporate governance.

3. Advancing Thermal Comfort in Educational Buildings Under the ESG Principles Framework: Current Status and Issues

Over the past decade, various research methods have been employed to investigate indoor thermal environments and thermal comfort, which can be broadly classified into four categories [23]: field measurements [20,97], which focus on collecting objective physical parameters of the thermal environment, such as air temperature and humidity; numerical simulations [75,96], which construct computational models to reproduce indoor thermal conditions as a substitute for real-world environments; the Predicted Mean Vote equation (PMV equation) [20,98], a mathematical model developed by Fanger et al. [105] that estimates thermal sensation based on environmental inputs, and is widely applied in building thermal comfort assessments; and questionnaires [20,91], which are developed in accordance with standards such as ISO 7730 [106] and ASHRAE 550 [107] to collect subjective evaluations of thermal comfort from occupants. Beyond methodological classification, prior studies have framed thermal comfort research around three key elements: ambient conditions, climate zones, and design variables [23]. This tripartite structure provides a comprehensive lens for tracking research developments in educational buildings. Figure 4 applies this framework to categorize the reviewed literature. Under the ESG principle, treating thermal comfort and energy decarbonization as separate or conflicting goals has become increasingly obsolete. Recent scholarship reveals a growing interdependence between indoor environmental quality and energy efficiency, a shift with particular relevance for educational settings. As buildings are expected to simultaneously fulfill environmental responsibilities and promote occupant well-being, integrating these objectives has become essential. This section explores how recent research in educational contexts reflects this convergence, with a focus on strategies that seek to balance environmental quality and energy performance in a unified approach.

Figure 4 applies the analytical framework to categorize the reviewed literature and presents a Sankey diagram that visualizes the relationships among four dimensions: research themes, key factors, evaluation methods, and ESG-aligned principles. The width of each flow represents the number of studies addressing that connection. Notably, the diagram reflects co-occurrence rather than the strength of association and does not incorporate weighting or scaling. This visual tool is intended to provide an intuitive overview of how methodologies and thematic priorities interact across the reviewed studies. Within the ESG framework, maintaining a dichotomy between thermal comfort and energy decarbonization is becoming increasingly untenable. Recent research reflects a growing convergence between indoor environmental quality and energy efficiency, a shift that holds particular relevance for educational environments. As buildings are expected to support both environmental performance and occupant well-being, integrating these objectives has become essential. This section examines how recent studies in educational settings have begun to reflect this convergence, particularly through strategies that balance thermal quality with energy performance. As illustrated in Figure 4, most thermal comfort studies in educational buildings have focused on ambient conditions and design variables. Research across all three core elements namely ambient conditions, climate zones, and design variables, has steadily increased over the past decade, reflecting growing academic interest in the topic [23]. Figure 4 further reveals a clear temporal clustering of research themes and methodological trends. Studies from 2014 to 2017 largely focused on building envelope components and passive strategies such as cool roofs and solar chimneys. In contrast, publications after 2020 have shifted toward integrated design optimization, the use of BIM for modeling, and artificial intelligence-based techniques, reflecting a methodological transformation shaped by the twin forces of increasingly frequent extreme weather events and the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Within the ESG framework, current research has primarily emphasized climate resilience and multidimensional human-centric design. These directions highlight the need for buildings to adapt to changing climates and respond to diverse occupant needs. In contrast, energy decarbonization, which focuses on reducing emissions throughout the building energy supply chain, is rarely addressed as a central objective. It is more often considered a secondary outcome or a constraint within broader investigations. However, under the ESG principle, it is no longer tenable to conceptualize energy decarbonization and thermal comfort as separate objectives. There is an urgent need for integrated design and operational strategies that prioritize co-benefits. In particular, research should promote synergistic optimization frameworks that align user-centered thermal demand with adaptive and intelligent energy management systems.

3.1. Climate Resilience and Thermal Comfort

Climatic conditions play a critical role in shaping indoor thermal comfort in educational buildings. As illustrated in

Table 2. Overview of thermal comfort studies for educational building thermal resilience.

Author	Location	Type of School	Climate Resilience Dimensions	Key Finding
Heracleous et al. [84]	Nicosia, Cyprus	Secondary school	Climate change, overheating	Natural ventilation and roof insulation are important for thermal comfort. The combination of the passive method and heat recovery ventilation can significantly reduce energy consumption.
Ziaee et al. [66]	Sari, Iran Tehran Iran	Not mentioned	Climate change, overheating	The influence of the amount of sky cloudiness on the optimum light-shelf properties defined for classrooms. The window-to-wall ratio and light-shelf sum significantly affect thermal comfort in a less cloudy sky area, while the opposite is true in a more cloudy sky area.
Liu et al. [26]	Five climate zones, China	University classroom	Different climate region	Optimizing the classroom’s deflection angle, length, width, height, and window-to-wall ratio significantly improves energy efficiency and daylighting performance.
Baba et al. [88]	Montreal, QC, Canada.	Not mentioned	Climate change, overheating	Reducing overheating time, reducing building energy consumption, and utilizing daylight are three objective functions to find the optimal school building design.
Stavrakakis et al. [43]	Athens, Greece.	Primary school	Warm climate region	Cool-roof impacts on thermal and energy performance of a school building located in Athens, Greece. Cool roofs are an effective solution for school buildings in warmer climates for increasing thermal comfort.
Barbosa et al. [52]	Portuguese, Brandão	Not mentioned	Mediterranean climate region	Establishing discomfort indexes for the assessment of the discomfort for Mediterranean temperate climate. Quantify the energy consumption and discomfort regarding passive renovation strategies and intermittent heating strategies.
Akkose et al. [104]	Ankara, Turkey	Secondary school	Urban microclimate, UHI	The optimal combination of passive measures has a significant impact on the adaptation of existing educational buildings to changing climatic conditions. The generation and analyses of climate change and UHI-modified weather datasets.

, current research in this domain demonstrates clear regional clustering, with concentrated efforts in Mediterranean, Asian, and North American climate zones. In warm-climate regions such as Greece and Iran, scholars have prioritized strategies to mitigate overheating, including cool roof applications and refined window design. In contrast, studies conducted in temperate and continental zones tend to emphasize improvements in envelope performance and integrated optimization of building design [43,66,84,88]. A growing number of studies have begun incorporating data on urban heat island effects and localized microclimates [104], signaling a methodological evolution from static, historical climate datasets to more adaptive, site-specific modeling approaches. This shift reflects an emerging focus on climate resilience within the ESG framework, indicating that microscale thermodynamics and regionally adaptive design are becoming essential to the pursuit of sustainable educational architecture. However, many existing studies overlook the variability in thermal adaptability and preference among populations across different climate zones [48,66], thereby compromising the accuracy of their assessments. Although standardized climate files are commonly used to capture environmental differences for indoor thermal environment analysis [24], such reliance on historical data reveals limitations in addressing extreme weather events and urban microclimate effects. Incorporating climate resilience into thermal comfort evaluations thus remains a pressing challenge. In practice, buildings are not only influenced by regional climatic classifications but must also respond to dynamic local conditions. Urban microclimate factors such as the urban heat island (UHI) effect and local wind field variations may exert a more significant impact on indoor thermal environments [96], yet are often beyond the scope of conventional climate files. Moreover, variations in climate zones shape different patterns of thermal adaptability among occupants, leading to divergent comfort expectations and evaluation criteria. These multi-layered and multi-scalar climatic influences highlight the need to embed climate resilience within thermal comfort assessment frameworks, reinforcing its importance in advancing sustainable development and human well-being under an ESG-driven approach.

As global warming accelerates, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, cold spells, and prolonged temperature anomalies, has brought the climate resilience of educational buildings into sharp focus. Overheating and heatwave conditions, in particular, pose long-term challenges to maintaining adequate thermal comfort in such environments [88]. Educational buildings, typically marked by high occupant density, dynamic user flow, and extended operational hours, often remain dependent on low-efficiency Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems that fail to meet peak cooling demands during summer periods [79]. In response, Heracleous et al. [84] used the IES-VE platform to develop a calibrated dynamic thermal simulation model and implemented active design strategies to improve ventilation performance and roof insulation, significantly alleviating overheating risk. Among all building envelope elements, windows, as the sole transparent component, play a decisive role in thermal insulation through their visible transmittance and airtightness, and are widely recognized as key levers in optimizing indoor thermal comfort [66,89]. These passive interventions not only reduce heat gain and cooling loads but also directly support carbon emission reduction targets aligned with environmental sustainability goals. In addition, by decreasing dependence on mechanical cooling systems, they enhance energy affordability and improve access to thermally comfortable learning spaces for vulnerable populations, thereby contributing to social equity objectives. From a governance perspective, implementing such measures in public educational buildings often reflects compliance with institutional sustainability mandates and public sector retrofit policies. Nonetheless, the majority of these simulation-based studies rely on historical climate files, which may inadequately reflect the severity and frequency of climate change-induced extremes such as overheating [89]. In future research, coupling numerical simulation with field measurement will be essential to accurately assess and predict the impacts of overheating and other extreme weather events, thereby advancing the climate resilience of educational buildings [68,84].

The capacity of buildings to adapt to climate change must address not only large-scale warming patterns and extreme weather events but also the nuanced regulation of urban microclimates. In educational settings, the influence of microclimatic conditions on thermal comfort can be more immediate and pronounced than that of broader climatic classifications [96]. Factors such as the UHI effect and greenhouse effect are critical in shaping localized thermal environments. Although climate files remain a standard input for thermal environment simulations [39], most of these datasets originate from suburban airports or meteorological stations and do not adequately capture urban phenomena like the UHI effect or canyon effect [104]. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), with its capacity for precise fluid modeling, offers a valuable approach for simulating localized microclimates; the resulting data can be used to calibrate boundary conditions in simulation platforms such as EnergyPlus, improving the representation of outdoor thermal conditions and enhancing the overall accuracy of thermal comfort evaluations.

Pronounced regional economic disparities have constrained both the development of localized thermal comfort research and the completeness of climate datasets in underdeveloped regions [48]. This lack of data and research infrastructure has made it difficult for such regions to apply standard numerical simulation approaches, ultimately compromising the overall accuracy and generalizability of existing models [52]. Climate resilience should therefore focus on developing region-specific evaluation criteria and optimization strategies. At present, a substantial portion of research on thermal comfort in educational buildings is concentrated in economically developed regions of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia [35,100,101]. In contrast, contributions from under-represented regions such as Africa, Central Asia, and South America remain sparse [74]. This imbalance raises concerns regarding the global applicability of prevailing findings and underscores the limitations of standard simulation tools in capturing the diversity of climatic and contextual realities. Importantly, regional disparities extend beyond climate conditions to encompass systemic differences in infrastructure. Educational buildings in resource-limited regions often face challenges such as poor thermal insulation, outdated HVAC systems, unreliable electricity supply, and insufficient environmental monitoring capabilities. These structural constraints severely limit the feasibility of implementing or benefiting from advanced thermal comfort models. As a result, there is a growing need for methodological adaptation and regional customization. Some standards have already begun addressing this issue; for instance, the widely used PMV equation, originally developed based on data from adult males in Northern Europe [105], has been revised in part through coupling with short-term adaptive comfort models to reduce climatic bias [107,108]. Alfano et al. [99] refined this further through field measurements and questionnaires, proposing revised comfort coefficients for naturally ventilated educational buildings in Mediterranean climates. Nevertheless, long-term climate patterns, lifestyles, and cultural differences continue to influence thermal adaptability and preferences, affecting comfort evaluation. Future research should aim to reduce the influence of such variability by coupling simulation with field-based evidence and identifying empirical correction factors, thereby improving the precision of climate resilience assessments in educational buildings across diverse climatic zones [68].

3.2. Multidimensional Human-Centric Design and Thermal Comfort

Energy-centric evaluation frameworks and design strategies have become widely adopted in the field of educational buildings, yet they often overlook users’ multidimensional needs and behavioral adaptability. As a result, efforts to enhance energy efficiency may neglect the occupant diversity and well-being that lie at the core of ESG principles. In contrast, multidimensional human-centric design strategies places greater emphasis on the physiological, psychological, and social dimensions of occupant experience, using precise thermal environment control to simultaneously improve comfort and support broader goals of sustainable development and human well-being. However, the inherently subjective and complex nature of thermal comfort makes the implementation of multidimensional human-centric design particularly challenging in educational contexts. As summarized in

Table 3. Overview of thermal comfort studies for multidimensional human-centric design.

Author	School Type	Evaluation/Optimization Method	Focus Parameters	Key Finding
Almeida et al. [22]	Kindergarten, primary school, university	PMV equation, questionnaire, EN 15251 adaptive model	Air temperature, mean radiant temperature, air velocity, relative humidity, floor temperature, clothing insulation	Differences between pupils’ perception and the results of thermal comfort models. When using the PMV equation method, the best way to adjust for metabolic rate is children’s body surface area as a correction factor.
Shan et al. [75]	University	Sensitivity analysis	Short-term memory, perception, mental arithmetic; sick leave and staff absence records, students’ average grades	Investigated the effects of indoor thermal environment on students’ well-being and performance. Metrics for students’ well-being and performance are monetized, and different weighting schemes for the metrics are compared with sensitivity analysis.
Hosamo et al. [74]	Secondary school	PMV equation, machine learning, NSGA II, BIM	BIM model, thermal environment-related sensor data, building envelope, and HVAC system characteristics	A system combines BIM, machine learning, and the NSGA II to find the best thermal comfort and energy consumption design solution.
Kükrer et al. [24]	University	DesignBuilder, EnergyPlus, PMV equation	HVAC parameters, air temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, mean radiant temperature	Aims to assess and improve the thermal comfort of the indoor environments of different educational buildings and to improve the occupants’ work efficiency.
Wang et al. [28]	Primary school	Questionnaire, PMV equation, learning cognitive test	Thermal sensation, thermal comfort, thermal preference, thermal acceptance; attention, perception, comprehension, and deduction performance index	A multivariate index evaluation model of thermal comfort to directly guide the design of thermal environments in primary and secondary school classrooms.

, current evaluation methods still rely heavily on environmental parameters such as air temperature and relative humidity. Dominant approaches include the PMV equation and its adaptive models [67], which depend primarily on physical variables, as well as questionnaire-based methods [22] that capture subjective user input. Both approaches fall short in addressing individual adaptability and multidimensional user needs. Recent studies have begun integrating physiological signals into the multidimensional human-centric design framework to more objectively capture the mechanisms of thermal comfort perception [21]. These efforts aim to develop personalized control strategies driven by physiological feedback, advancing the design of truly intelligent and multidimensional human-centric thermal environments.

Research on thermal environment optimization still heavily favors energy-centric design strategies [23], with some studies even reducing thermal comfort to a fixed condition of 26 °C [52,94]. However, as indicated in Table 3, thermal comfort is shaped by a constellation of factors including air temperature, relative humidity, mean radiant temperature, metabolic rate, individual adaptability, and psychological expectations. Reducing comfort to a single-variable metric overlooks occupant diversity and runs counter to the fairness and inclusivity at the core of ESG-driven design. Multidimensional human-centric design thus requires a multidimensional approach capable of generating accurate, personalized strategies for thermal environment control. Hoz-Torres et al. [54] applied machine learning algorithms, including artificial neural networks (ANNs) and random forests (RFs), to examine the intricate relationship between thermal comfort and complex environmental conditions in naturally ventilated educational buildings. Leveraging data-driven methods, multidimensional human-centric design can advance toward responsive design tailored to user needs and context, delivering flexible control solutions that enhance thermal comfort while supporting sustainable development and human well-being.

MHCD places emphasis on equity, adaptability, and long-term health outcomes across diverse user groups, with the goal of creating indoor environments that are both inclusive and adaptive [109]. Thermal comfort evaluations serve as a critical foundation for educational building design, and ongoing research continues to seek methods that account for users’ multidimensional needs and varying thermal preferences. As shown in Table 3, the PMV equation and questionnaire-based approaches remain the dominant tools in current research and practice [35,43,74]. While the PMV equation estimates comfort based on environmental parameters [24], its integration with adaptive models allows for better accommodation of individual variability and climatic context [67]. By contrast, questionnaire metrics such as the Thermal Comfort Vote (TCV) [28] and Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) [103], which rely on subjective responses, help address the PMV equation’s limitations in capturing perceptual nuance. Notably, these subjective survey instruments also provide a basis for distinguishing thermal preferences across educational stages. Students at different levels often exhibit varying degrees of self-regulation, metabolic activity, and behavioral responses. Despite this, some studies still rely on broad user classifications, as shown in Table 2, which may obscure age-related physiological and behavioral differences. Adopting a more structured classification system based on educational level can significantly improve the interpretive validity and contextual applicability of comfort strategies across student groups. These questionnaires are typically analyzed through simple linear regression, which, while effective in identifying basic patterns between comfort and environmental factors, often falls short in capturing the nonlinear interactions that arise from the complex use patterns of educational buildings. Although methods like multi-linear regression and binary logistic regression have been introduced to enhance prediction [103], the use of advanced data-driven techniques such as machine learning [54] remains limited in explaining the multifaceted relationships between thermal comfort and environmental conditions.

While the PMV equation and related methods have established a robust physical foundation for evaluating thermal comfort, assessments within MHCD-based design frameworks cannot rely solely on environmental parameters. This is particularly critical in educational buildings, where occupants span multiple age groups with distinct thermal comfort needs, and understanding such differences presents a key design and evaluation challenge. Existing studies [87] and industry standards [106,107] have yet to sufficiently account for variability in students’ thermal sensation [76], potentially reducing the reliability of thermal comfort assessments. Under identical thermal conditions, students with differing physiological or perceptual profiles may report significantly divergent comfort levels, introducing bias into MHCD-driven decision-making. This observation underscores the fact that subjective thermal experience is not only highly variable but often poorly correlated with physical indicators. Therefore, feedback from occupants serves as a necessary complement to model-based assessments. In response, a number of studies have combined subjective measurement tools such as the Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) and Thermal Comfort Vote (TCV) with short-term adaptive models to better reflect rapid perceptual changes in naturally ventilated learning spaces [103]. Future research and relevant standards should provide more detailed classifications of age groups and school stages in educational settings to more clearly define the boundaries of user needs. Methodologically, future work should explore the combined PMV equation and questionnaire-based approaches with multimodal data from physiological sensing and machine learning, allowing for more adaptive, dynamic, and personalized thermal comfort assessment frameworks tailored to educational settings. This is especially important in the case of younger children, whose physiological and behavioral responses to thermal conditions differ considerably from those of older students and adults. Recognizing and accounting for these differences is essential to promoting thermal equity and perceptual fairness in educational design. Advances in computing power and sensor technology have also enabled numerical simulations to incorporate thermos-physiological models, opening new possibilities for high-fidelity modeling. In alternative environmental scenarios, some studies have begun merging TSV-derived subjective preference data with environmental sensor inputs to support zoned comfort control or dynamic HVAC scheduling. This approach represents a shift toward experience-informed hybrid modeling that preserves the user’s perceptual dimension. Additionally, the development of high-resolution thermos-physiological models such as JOS-3 [110] and ThERMODE 2023 [111] allows for detailed simulations of physiological responses, including skin temperature and sweat secretion. While these tools significantly enhance the precision of comfort modeling across diverse user populations, their limited integration with subjective feedback and individual adaptability data remains a key barrier to the realization of truly comprehensive and multidimensional thermal comfort assessments.

3.3. Energy Decarbonization and Thermal Comfort

As discussed in Section 3, energy decarbonization has received limited attention within thermal comfort research due to fundamental differences in their core priorities and methodological trajectories. Energy decarbonization primarily involves restructuring energy systems and improving overall building efficiency, whereas thermal comfort centers on the interaction between indoor environmental parameters and human thermal perception. Studies addressing both thermal comfort and energy consumption [26,27,40] are often framed around technical objectives such as the pursuit of near-zero energy buildings, with a strong focus on engineering performance and limited engagement with the underlying mechanisms of thermal comfort. Under the ESG framework, energy decarbonization should no longer be conceptualized as a stand-alone technological measure. Instead, it must be embedded within a human-centric architectural agenda that foregrounds occupant well-being and long-term environmental sustainability. Given the inherently subjective nature of thermal comfort, achieving true integration requires coordinated, multi-layered optimization across design, operation, and performance domains. Energy decarbonization must be pursued not only through engineering efficiency but also through responsiveness to user needs and perceptions. This alignment demands a more ambitious and complex form of optimization, raising the bar for what constitutes meaningful decarbonization in the built environment.

With the growing prevalence of optimization algorithms, an increasing number of studies have turned to multi-objective optimization (MOO) to address the trade-offs between thermal comfort and energy consumption [66], aiming to strike a dynamic balance between energy decarbonization and human well-being. In applied contexts, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) [66] are often coupled with complementary methods to provide structured decision-making support for ESG-driven building design. In algorithmic configurations, Khani et al. [59] integrated NSGA-II with K-means clustering to maintain solution diversity and avoid local optimal, thereby enhancing global search performance. These multi-algorithm approaches offer rigorous support for ESG-driven decisions by balancing environmental performance, economic feasibility, and user comfort. On the modeling front, simulation tools grounded in building model information (BIM) and numerical workflows [59,67], including EnergyPlus, Honeybee, and OpenStudio, have been extensively employed to evaluate the decarbonization potential of diverse energy systems and design strategies. Meanwhile, the rise of parametric modeling platforms such as Rhino + Grasshopper [59,112] has enabled efficiently integrate MOO strategies into architectural workflows, facilitating the exploration of decarbonization pathways and optimization of overall building performance.

Research on thermal comfort and energy decarbonization still largely relies on single-mode evaluation and optimization strategies, which face clear limitations in addressing the complexity of design needs [27]. Given the inherently subjective and multidimensional nature of thermal comfort, future research should prioritize the construction of an integrated assessment framework that synthesizes numerical simulation, PMV-based modeling, and questionnaire data to enable cross-method complementarity. In advancing interdisciplinary data integration, a robust coordination strategy is needed to align parameters across three critical dimensions, physical simulations [22], thermal comfort models [91], and subjective experience data [97], which may offer a viable path forward [19]. Establishing coherence among these domains can facilitate stronger linkages between environmental performance metrics, perceptual responses, and actual occupant experiences. Such integration enables the development of a multi-source, multi-dimensional evaluation framework that improves the fidelity of comfort modeling and supports more effective thermal environment design. This comprehensive approach lays the groundwork for building strategies that simultaneously promote low-carbon objectives and ensure human-centric indoor comfort. Moving forward, future research should advance co-optimization approaches that link occupant-driven thermal demand with system-level decarbonization targets. For example, integrating thermal comfort assessment modules directly into BIM environments and other architectural information platforms allows real-time feedback on both comfort and energy use. Moreover, the application of optimization algorithms, particularly multi-objective optimization (MOO), can dynamically manage trade-offs between thermal satisfaction and carbon emission reduction. These integrated design strategies offer a promising pathway for achieving both environmental sustainability and occupant well-being, and they represent the core intent of ESG-aligned architectural practice.

4. Towards Responsible Energy Consumption in Educational Buildings: Insights from a Decade of ESG-Oriented Developments

Although ESG principles have not yet been systematically adopted as analytical frameworks in most studies, a significant number of investigations have indirectly addressed ESG-oriented concerns, particularly in the domains of energy decarbonization, human well-being, and climate adaptation. This section synthesizes these implicit trajectories to illustrate how thermal comfort research has gradually converged with ESG-relevant priorities over the past decade. In response to global warming, increasing reliance on air conditioning to regulate indoor environments has significantly raised building energy consumption, which now accounts for approximately 40% of global primary energy use and one-third of greenhouse gas emissions [39]. Among the major contributors are systems directly related to thermal comfort, including heating, cooling, and ventilation. As shown in Figure 5, the number of energy-centered studies has grown markedly between 2014 and 2024, with key themes and methodologies chronologically tracked. To produce this figure, the present review categorized the 84 selected studies based on their strategic focus, such as active design (e.g., HVAC systems), passive design (e.g., building envelope interventions), or integrated strategies. These were then linked to their methodological approaches, such as numerical simulation or field measurement, as well as to the specific ESG dimensions they engaged with. The Sankey diagram offers a clear visual representation of how research priorities have evolved over time and how they align with the core concerns of ESG principles. Early research (2014 to 2017) tended to emphasize passive cooling and envelope-level interventions, while recent studies (2020 to 2024) have increasingly adopted system-level approaches involving machine learning, multi-objective optimization, and advanced energy modeling. As a result, thermal energy use has become a critical concern in ESG-driven evaluations of thermal comfort in educational buildings. This concern is further reflected in the sharp rise in energy consumption research between 2014 and 2024, as shown in Figure 5. However, under the ESG framework, research has predominantly focused on energy decarbonization, while relatively few studies have addressed climate resilience or multidimensional human-centric design in the context of energy use. This imbalance is largely driven by the alignment of energy decarbonization with global carbon reduction policies and renewable energy initiatives, reinforced by energy performance standards such as LEED [113] and BREEAM [114].

In the study of energy consumption in educational buildings, numerical simulation and field measurement have become the most common methods. Simulation tools, particularly CFD, EnergyPlus, and other Building Energy Simulation (BES) platforms, are widely used to evaluate the interaction between indoor thermal environments and energy use [70,93]. The integration of BIM with EnergyPlus has proven especially effective in improving energy performance outcomes [73,77]. As shown in Figure 5, these methodological advances are often linked with energy decarbonization goals, while their application to climate resilience and human-centric strategies remains limited. Moreover, current research tends to categorize energy consumption studies into two main areas: active design strategies, focusing on high-consumption systems such as HVAC [27,30] and ventilation [17,95], and passive design strategies, centered on building envelope components including windows and roofs [42].

4.1. Energy Decarbonization and Energy Consumption

The high functional intensity of educational buildings leads to considerable energy consumption [36], making its reduction a fundamental prerequisite for achieving energy decarbonization. As outlined in

Table 4. Overview of energy consumption studies for educational building energy decarbonization.

Author	Evaluation/Optimization Method	Focus Parameters	Key Finding
Ledesma et al. [82]	EnergyPlus, MATLAB, passive design strategies	Edible green roof, hydroponic rooftop greenhouses, thermally integrated rooftop greenhouses; indoor temperature, humidity and CO2 levels	Evaluating the ability of rooftop farms to improve thermal comfort and reduce energy consumption in educational buildings. Incorporates the heat and mass balance of plants into building simulations by developing a novel co-simulation to leverage the transient flow exchange between crops and buildings.
Song et al. [29]	Thermal labyrinth ventilation system, active design strategies, sustainable energy	Average OATL flow rate and wind speed in the horizontal duct, hours using the horizontal duct and vertical duct, temperature distributions, average temperature	Evaluating the energy performance of the thermal labyrinth ventilation system (TLVS) and geothermal energy as a sustainable energy source in a Korean university. Exploring the potential of TLVS as a method to reduce energy consumption in educational buildings.
Mytafides et al. [34]	BIM, CFD	Lighting equipment, HVAC systems electricity, fossil fuels, renewable energy, building components	Evaluating the energy saving methods of a university building in Mediterranean climate with significant energy consumption. Pursuing ideal indoor thermal comfort while minimizing the energy consumption of passive heating and cooling techniques technology.
Dias et al. [86]	Filed measurement, energy bills, questionnaires, linear regression	Air exchange rate, window-to-floor ratio, CO2 concentration, air temperature, air relative humidity	Students have a tendency to have a mid-season thermal preference for slightly warmer environments that accept higher temperatures than the standard temperature range. When the system is not in operation, the rate of air renewal, i.e., through the opening of windows, should be increased in order to improve the conditions of the indoor environment.
Allab et al. [90]	Electricity, gas, and thermal energy bills, field measurement, Transient System Simulation Tool, tracer gas measurements	Air temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, air change rate, age of air and air exchange efficiency	Existing simple HVAC systems and ventilation strategies do not fully meet occupant comfort standards. Transitioning from solely mechanical ventilation to natural or mixed-mode ventilation strategies can substantially improve both energy efficiency and occupant comfort.

, current studies primarily focus on active and passive design strategies and the adoption of sustainable energy sources to pursue sustainable development goals, employing diverse technologies to either minimize energy use or substitute it with renewables [29,34,82]. In quantifying energy consumption, researchers typically rely on field measurements of energy bills or relevant numerical simulations. However, when addressing thermal comfort, many studies still depend mainly on thermal environment models such as the PMV equation [61]. Striking a balance between reducing energy use and maintaining appropriate thermal comfort not only supports carbon emission targets but also catalyzes the green transformation of educational buildings. In addition, Table 4 highlights a notable shift toward integrated methodological approaches. A subset of studies now utilizes BIM-CFD hybrid modeling and multi-objective optimization frameworks to mediate the often competing demands of energy efficiency and occupant comfort [34,92]. These methods introduce greater flexibility and user-centered responsiveness into the design process and reflect an evolving ESG agenda that emphasizes the co-optimization of energy performance and thermal well-being in educational spaces.

Current energy decarbonization strategies primarily emphasize passive design strategies [64] and active design strategies [29], with HVAC systems and building components emerging as critical focal points. Within active strategies, HVAC systems typically account for 40–60% of a building’s total energy consumption [92], rendering HVAC optimization one of the most effective approaches for reducing energy use in educational buildings. To evaluate the performance of such systems, researchers frequently employ energy bills [86] and numerical simulations [30]. Numerical simulations estimate a building’s demand for heating, cooling, and ventilation [74], while energy bills evaluate long-term economic benefits across different energy systems [64]. Passive strategies, on the other hand, focus on elements such as building envelopes [115], roofs [116] and windows [63], which have garnered increasing academic interest due to their critical roles in thermal comfort regulation. The thermal boundary effect of the envelope governs the rate of heat exchange between indoor and outdoor environments; roofs are highly sensitive to solar exposure and ambient conditions; and the visible transmittance and airtightness of windows critically shape a building’s insulation and ventilation performance. In educational settings, the shape and material composition of roofs substantially influence heating and cooling demands [42], with cool roof [43,53] and green roof [39] technologies receiving particular attention. Within the broader context of sustainable development, Ledesma et al. [82] employed a co-simulation framework using EnergyPlus and MATLAB to develop a green roof system that integrates the heat and mass balances of vegetation and analyzes transient flow exchanges between crops and buildings. This process culminated in a novel model of heat and moisture exchange, showcasing notable environmental value and expanded potential for integrated energy data utilization.

The concept of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs) forms a foundational pillar in the pursuit of energy decarbonization. Within the domain of educational buildings, research has advanced through three strategic pathways: reducing reliance on cooling and heating systems [33], optimizing overall energy consumption [65], and promoting the adoption of sustainable and clean energy sources [35]. While the first two focus on demand-side management, the incorporation of sustainable energy entails a supply-side transformation of the energy system. In contrast to large commercial or industrial structures, sustainable energy initiatives in educational settings often lack the scale-related efficiency and cost competitiveness typically achievable in larger projects. As a result, these initiatives have received limited scholarly attention and remain under-represented in existing research. Nonetheless, technologies such as ground-source heat pumps and solar-assisted ventilation systems have proven effective in this context. For instance, Song et al. [29] significantly lowered air conditioning energy consumption by using geothermal resources to precondition incoming air, thereby enhancing the building’s energy structure. Similarly, Harrouz et al. [55] developed an integrated solar–windcatcher system, which functions as an innovative passive ventilation and cooling solution that reduces thermal load through evaporative and convective processes. Future research may further explore the applications of solar [102] and biomass energy [117] in educational buildings, enriching the portfolio of renewable energy strategies. At the same time, the development of supporting infrastructure remains vital. In this regard, precinct-based and dynamic time-based accessibility models [118] may offer a methodological basis for rationalizing the spatial configuration of district energy systems at the city scale.

4.2. Climate Resilience and Energy Consumption

The ESG principle, which highlights the implications of climate change for the built environment, positions climate resilience as a critical research dimension in the context of educational buildings, with a focus on guiding anticipatory adjustments to systems such as HVAC to enhance preparedness for long-term climate change and sudden extreme weather events [65]. Numerical simulation approaches employing BES tools such as CFD and EnergyPlus have been widely used to assess the capacity of educational buildings to adapt to both gradual climatic changes and acute environmental stressors [70,93]. Furthermore, the integration of BIM with EnergyPlus has demonstrated efficacy in improving the resilience and energy performance of educational buildings under scenarios of climate variability and extremes [74]. However, as climate change accelerates and extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, the adequacy of existing simulation frameworks and static climate datasets has been increasingly called into question.

To address these growing uncertainties, overheating risks brought about by intensifying heatwaves are posing escalating challenges to the climate resilience of educational buildings [79]. In response, many studies have adopted Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) climate files to estimate energy consumption in the evaluation of thermal comfort conditions [46]. However, parameters from these historical datasets are often incorporated into simulation platforms such as EnergyPlus and CFD in a simplified manner, failing to capture the complex interactions and nonlinear feedback loops inherent in real-world climatic dynamics [119]. In response, María et al. [54] developed a nonlinear multi-variable coupling model using machine learning algorithms such as RF to better reflect the intricate interdependencies among thermal environmental variables. Moreover, as intelligent building systems and real-time management platforms become more widespread, historical climate files in certain regions fall short in supporting the adaptive capabilities required for dynamic environmental control [119]. Future research should prioritize the development of open and standardized data interfaces and cloud-based platforms that integrate large-scale, real-time urban climate data, while also encouraging the open sharing of fine-grained indoor thermal environment data. The development of participatory, network community-driven platforms for environmental data contribution, coupled with the integration of such datasets into mainstream BES tools (e.g., EnergyPlus and CFD [120]), is essential to enhancing the accuracy of dynamic climate modeling and supporting fine-tuned, adaptive control strategies within building systems.

4.3. Multidimensional Human-Centric Design and Energy Consumption

MHCD emphasizes how the indoor environment shapes user experience. Recent studies in this area have largely focused on reducing energy consumption through spatial and operational design strategies, with numerical simulation remaining the predominant research method [26,43]. Within BES tools, thermal comfort is frequently reduced to a secondary consideration or even treated as a limiting factor, as it is typically modeled using simplified thermal environment variables [87]. Such simplifications are insufficient for capturing the nuanced perceptual [63,67,74] and physiological variations across different user groups [44]. Hong et al. [38] utilized the k-ε turbulence model within a CFD framework, integrating Agent-Based Models (ABMs) to replicate complex occupant behaviors and their associated thermal comfort outcomes. This hybrid modeling approach enhances the understanding of the dynamic interactions between human activity patterns and energy demand, offering a more nuanced perspective on the behavioral dimensions of indoor environmental performance. Li et al. [31] approached the issue from the perspective of heating schedule optimization in educational buildings, proposing adjustments to operational hours that synchronize class schedules with thermal comfort needs. Their strategy reduced heat loss from intermittent heating while maintaining acceptable comfort conditions. As an active design approach, it not only improves energy efficiency through dynamic control but also accommodates differentiated heating requirements among users. Nonetheless, ABMs rely heavily on large-scale behavioral datasets for accurate prediction, and their complexity may significantly increase computational demand. Moreover, Li et al.’s [31] model accounted only for heat transfer between adjacent classrooms, without addressing thermal losses across the broader building envelope. These findings highlight the need for more integrative modeling approaches that can dynamically align energy-saving objectives with user-centered thermal requirements in educational settings.

5. An ESG-Driven Framework and Future Research Pathways for Thermal Comfort in Educational Buildings

5.1. ESG-Driven Multidimensional Framework

Although this study offers a systematic review of thermal comfort research in educational buildings over the past decade through the lens of the ESG principle, a substantial gap persists in translating ESG objectives into actionable strategies that can effectively inform both research and design practices. Despite a wealth of contributions from architectural technology [18], energy systems science [119], human physiology [110,111], and the social sciences [54], thermal comfort research is inherently interdisciplinary. However, many existing studies fail to adopt a sufficiently holistic or integrative perspective, which limits their ability to capture the complex and subtle cross-domain interactions that ultimately influence thermal comfort outcomes. Prior ESG-informed studies have largely concentrated on environmental and social dimensions in the pursuit of thermal comfort in educational settings [26], while governance considerations have often been absent from the discourse. In response, articulating an integrated, multidimensional ESG-oriented framework tailored to thermal comfort in educational buildings has become a necessary step toward bridging disciplinary silos and advancing equitable, sustainable built environments [121]. As shown in Figure 6, the ESG framework encompasses five primary dimensions: sustainable development, human well-being, climate action, public good, and corporate governance. Among these, climate resilience, multidimensional human-centric design, and energy decarbonization have emerged as central to thermal comfort research. In contrast, the dimensions of public good and corporate governance, although marginal in existing studies, are now recognized as critical directions for future inquiry. Notably, the thematic anchors mentioned above, namely climate resilience, multidimensional human-centric design, and energy decarbonization, are not arbitrary selections. Instead, they are derived focal points grounded in the prevailing trajectory of ESG-oriented thermal comfort research. In the present section, these themes are further distilled into seven actionable dimensions. This refinement enables more precise theoretical modeling and practical implementation, reflecting a transition from abstract ESG categories to structured constructs capable of supporting systematic assessment and research planning. Figure 7 introduces a comprehensive evaluation matrix that maps the intersection of ESG dimensions with key conceptual domains of thermal comfort and energy consumption in educational buildings. Colored cells indicate areas where specific ESG dimensions have been incorporated into the reviewed studies. Cells marked with white circles denote strong thematic linkages, typically representing instances where ESG criteria are central to the research objective or analytical framework. The matrix highlights Sustainable Development and Human Well-being as the most consistently represented ESG dimensions, particularly in studies addressing thermal environment stability, sustainable energy use, and heterogenous demand. Strong thematic linkages cluster around energy transitions, passive design strategies, and physiological model integration, suggesting these are key leverage points for ESG-aligned innovation. Research on climate change tends to concentrate on extreme weather adaptation and regional specificity but remains limited in energy-centered investigations. Meanwhile, corporate governance and public good remain underexplored, presenting significant opportunities for future work in participatory processes, accountability mechanisms, and equitable access to thermal resources. Grounded in both ESG imperatives and the evolving needs of thermal comfort scholarship, the proposed framework is anchored in the following foundational elements:

Thermal environment stability: Global climate change has introduced heightened uncertainty into the future design of building thermal environments, placing thermal stability under extreme weather events at the forefront of challenges for educational buildings, particularly in the domains of energy consumption and thermal comfort. Ensuring thermal stability in educational settings involves not only reinforcing a building’s climate resilience and regulating the energy required to maintain acceptable thermal conditions but also responding to students’ and staff’s diverse thermal needs and expectations. As such, thermal environment stability is not solely a matter of shaping indoor physical conditions; it also requires balancing environmental parameters with the energy necessary to sustain them over extended periods of academic occupancy.

Multimodal thermal comfort assessment integration: Thermal comfort assessment is inherently interdisciplinary, spanning environmental science, physiology, and psychology, which makes the integration of multimodal methods essential for improving evaluative accuracy. Within educational buildings, age-related variation strongly shapes thermal perception, rendering standard models such as the PMV equation and its adaptive extensions insufficient for capturing the diverse thermal needs of students. This limitation runs counter to ESG principles that emphasize social inclusivity and governance accountability. To address this, a multidimensional assessment framework should be further developed to incorporate data from four core domains: subjective perception, physiological responses, environmental parameters, and behavioral feedback, thereby enabling a more accurate identification of students’ needs based on multisource evidence. High-resolution thermos-physiological models such as JOS-3 [110] and ThERMODE 2023 [111] are already capable of simulating interactions between environmental and physiological parameters with impressive accuracy. These models can calculate skin temperature, sweat secretion, and spatial heat distribution under dynamic indoor conditions. However, they fall short in capturing subjective perception and behavioral responses. Linking these models with standardized survey instruments, such as the Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV), offers a promising route toward building more comprehensive multimodal evaluation systems. At the same time, the deployment of such integrated approaches must carefully navigate a landscape shaped by privacy laws, data ownership protocols, and institutional constraints. These factors can impose both methodological and normative limitations on how comfort data are collected and used. In response, this study recommends adopting modular and context-sensitive strategies that allow researchers to select and adapt regionally appropriate platforms in alignment with local governance frameworks. Such an approach balances scientific rigor with regulatory feasibility and supports the development of inclusive, adaptable, and ethically grounded comfort assessment practices.

Sustainable energy use: Sustainable energy strategies for educational buildings are centered on reducing overall energy consumption, lowering dependence on fossil fuels, and minimizing negative environmental impacts. Although geothermal and solar energy technologies are relatively well established in the educational building sector, a fully integrated and diversified portfolio of sustainable energy options remains underdeveloped. Expanding the adoption of renewables such as wind and biomass energy entails not only upgrading clean energy infrastructure but also identifying solutions and energy types that are regionally appropriate, taking into account local climatic, geographic, and infrastructural conditions. To ensure equitable access to the environmental and economic benefits of energy transitions, supportive policy frameworks and implementation mechanisms must be designed with equity and reflect regional needs.

Heterogenous thermal demand equality: Students’ thermal demands are shaped by a confluence of subjective and objective factors, including age, activity levels, and region-specific differences in thermal preferences and adaptability. Addressing this diversity of needs is not only an objective requirement in educational building research but also aligns with ESG principle’ s imperatives related to human well-being and social equity. Thermal comfort assessments and optimization strategies should be adapted to regional climatic conditions, while thermal environments must remain responsive to the differentiated needs of various age groups. Such approaches foster greater diversity and inclusivity in the design of thermal environments within educational settings, enabling a more accurate reflection of societal needs and interests and ultimately advancing both student well-being and sustainable development.

Passive–active design synergistic optimization: Passive and active design strategies are fundamental to achieving low energy consumption, thermal comfort, and environmental sustainability in educational buildings. Passive strategies employ low-impact, climate-responsive techniques to harness the natural environment for regulating indoor thermal conditions, while active strategies leverage HVAC systems and intelligent control technologies to support occupant health and well-being, alongside promoting energy efficiency and the integration of renewable energy sources. By advancing passive–active design synergistic optimization, future research and design practice in educational buildings can yield integrated solutions that simultaneously enhance student long-term health condition, thereby reinforcing the broader goals of sustainable development and human well-being.

Participatory thermal data governance and educational thermal well-being inclusivity: As policy-driven and equity-oriented extensions of the ESG framework, participatory thermal data governance and educational thermal well-being inclusivity represent two emerging yet underexplored dimensions that are grounded in corporate governance and public good, respectively. Their limited adoption within current thermal comfort research on educational buildings reflects a persistent gap between environmental systems thinking and socially embedded design practices. Participatory thermal data governance emphasizes collective decision-making and transparency in the management of thermal environments. It advocates for the meaningful inclusion of diverse stakeholder perspectives—including those of students, teachers, parents, and private sector partners—to mediate the often-competing demands of thermal comfort and energy efficiency. In an illustrative study by Lopez et al. [122], semi-structured interviews were conducted with a broad group of school stakeholders, including administrators, educators, students, and community members. The research proposed a co-governance framework that embedded feedback loops, participatory data collection systems, and adaptive management strategies into the operational logic of educational buildings. Despite these efforts, the governance dimension remains underdeveloped, with most current applications limited to localized experiments or pilot initiatives. There is an urgent need to construct a systematic framework that integrates governance roles, policy instruments, and multi-stakeholder coordination into the ongoing management of thermal comfort in educational contexts. In contrast, educational thermal well-being inclusivity focuses on ensuring that all students, regardless of physical ability or classroom location, have equitable access to thermally comfortable learning environments. Given the microclimatic heterogeneity that characterizes indoor spaces, spatial variations in thermal conditions across classroom zones are both prevalent and consequential. Addressing these disparities goes beyond individual thermal experience and reflects a broader commitment to environmental equity and the pursuit of environmental justice in the educational context.

5.2. Future Work and Research Need

By systematically proposing a refined ESG-driven multidimensional framework, this study offers a theoretically grounded pathway to advancing the sustainable development of educational buildings and enhancing student-centered human well-being. However, a translational gap persists between theoretical insights and practical implementation, underscoring the need for continued research efforts to bridge this divide. As detailed in the preceding sections (Section 3.1, Section 3.2 and Section 3.3, Section 4.1, Section 4.2 and Section 4.3, and Section 5.1), we have explored the future research directions and critical considerations associated with seven ESG-aligned dimensions: thermal environment stability, multimodal thermal comfort assessment integration, sustainable energy use, heterogeneous thermal demand equality, passive–active design synergistic optimization, participatory thermal data governance, and educational thermal well-being inclusivity. Together, these dimensions offer a robust and holistic framework for advancing ESG principles in educational settings. Yet despite this comprehensiveness, current research continues to focus predominantly on the environmental dimension, particularly in areas related to climate resilience and design strategies. In contrast, the social and governance components of ESG remain insufficiently explored. On the social side, future research must prioritize younger and vulnerable student populations, whose unique perceptual and physiological needs are frequently marginalized under standardized evaluation models. Regarding governance, participatory decision-making is still limited to experimental efforts, with a lack of formal structures or scalable implementation pathways. To address these shortcomings, ESG-aligned research should move toward the integration of equity-based thermal comfort benchmarks, institutionalized stakeholder participation protocols, and cross-sector coordination mechanisms. Embedding diverse stakeholder perspectives into thermal decision-making processes is essential for fostering inclusivity, transparency, and justice in the built educational environment. The following section further elaborates on actionable pathways for realizing the five foundational objectives embedded in the ESG framework and aligning them with future research and policy agendas. To consolidate the insights presented here, it is necessary to provide a concise summary of the ESG-oriented framework. This framework integrates seven dimensions, ranging from thermal and energy performance to equity and governance, into a unified evaluation system. These are not fixed metrics but interdependent and adaptable modules that can be deployed according to the unique demands, scale, and context of a given educational building. At the implementation level, we recommend a phased approach comprising the use of localized tools that account for subjective and physiological variability, the adoption of design protocols that optimize passive and active systems in tandem, and the institutionalization of participatory processes that incorporate user feedback into both planning and retrofit decisions. These strategies aim to activate the ESG framework as a practical foundation for inclusive and sustainable thermal comfort design.

Climate change: Computational tools such as CFD and EnergyPlus have become central to evaluating indoor thermal comfort in educational buildings, yet their dependence on theoretical assumptions and high-resolution climate datasets may lead to the underestimation of risks posed by extreme weather conditions. These methodological constraints underscore the limitations of singular modeling approaches and static climate files in capturing the multifaceted impacts of climate change and urban microclimatic variability on thermal comfort outcomes. Future research must adopt interdisciplinary and multi-scalar strategies that integrate regional climate modeling, with enhanced accuracy achieved through CFD simulations, in order to better capture urban microclimate dynamics and UHI effects. The integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques offers a transformative opportunity to enhance predictive accuracy and enable dynamic assessments of climate extremes, ultimately bolstering climate resilience within educational environments. Recent advancements, including the use of reinforcement learning and hybrid CFD-BES simulations, have been embedded into Building Management Systems (BMSs) to facilitate real-time HVAC control and responsive thermal optimization [38,92]. Pilot studies by DeepComfort et al. [92] and Hong et al. [38] showcase the potential of AI-driven building systems to dynamically balance energy efficiency and occupant comfort in response to environmental fluctuations. Looking ahead, the development of next-generation climate datasets will be essential. These datasets should feature microclimate-sensitive, high-resolution spatial frameworks to support consistent and context-specific thermal comfort evaluations across varied educational settings. Realizing this vision will require coordinated collaboration among researchers, industry practitioners, and policymakers. It also calls for strong civic engagement to co-create an open, inclusive, and participatory climate data infrastructure that empowers all stakeholders to engage actively in climate-adaptive decision-making for educational buildings.

Human well-being: Conventional approaches to evaluating thermal comfort often rely on a single-dimensional perspective, yet thermal comfort is influenced not only by environmental parameters but also by individuals’ subjective perceptions and psychological states. Future research should prioritize understanding how individual variability shapes thermal comfort, leveraging multi-source data from subjective surveys, psychophysiological measurements, and behavioral observations. Employing interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional research methods, it is crucial to develop a comprehensive evaluation framework that integrates four interconnected domains: subjective perception, physiological responses, environmental parameters, and behavioral feedback. This approach enables a more precise understanding of students’ adaptive responses and behavioral dynamics within thermal environments. Moreover, thermal preference differences driven by regional climates and age-related characteristics should be carefully considered, ensuring that thermal comfort outcomes uphold principles of fairness, individual adaptability, and long-term health equity across diverse student populations, thereby fulfilling the vision of human-centric design. Furthermore, the pursuit of reduced energy consumption must not be divorced from the goal of thermal comfort. Sustainable pathways are more likely to emerge from the integration of supply-side shifts toward clean energy with demand-side strategies that combine passive design principles and active system control. Demand-side interventions must be grounded in user needs to ensure their real-world effectiveness, particularly in schools. From both environmental sustainability and social justice standpoints, such integration is essential. Children represent a uniquely vulnerable demographic in thermal comfort discourse, yet they remain under-represented in research and policy. Current institutional frameworks and retrofit strategies rarely incorporate structured feedback mechanisms for young learners. Standardized thermal benchmarks often fail to differentiate between younger and older student populations, and there is limited guidance on how to meaningfully include children’s perceptual data in comfort-driven decision-making. To promote equity and improve governance across environmental, social, and institutional dimensions, future work must formalize age-sensitive design policies, expand inclusive participation mechanisms, and affirm the thermal rights of children as central to the creation of just and supportive educational environments.

Sustainable development: Research within the energy decarbonization dimension is heavily skewed toward improving energy efficiency, often at the expense of adequately addressing users’ subjective experiences and individual differences. While standardized tools such as the PMV equation provide a foundational physical framework for thermal comfort evaluation, they frequently fail to account for the physiological and psychological heterogeneity across student populations. In addition, a predominant focus on demand-side strategies has led to the relative neglect of supply-side approaches such as energy structure reform and systemic energy transition, which are equally critical for achieving sustainable development goals. Reliance on passive and active design measures aimed solely at reducing consumption from the demand side may prove insufficient to realize the full potential of sustainable development. Future research should shift toward a whole-system perspective that considers the optimization of the entire energy chain, from production and distribution to end-use. Within this context, a key challenge involves not only identifying context-appropriate sustainable energy alternatives for educational buildings but also integrating them effectively with modern energy infrastructure to facilitate the deployment of renewable systems that are both highly efficient and environmentally sustainable.

Public good and corporate governance: The dimensions of public good and corporate governance warrant systematic exploration in future research, as they hold significant potential for advancing equitable and participatory approaches to thermal comfort in educational buildings. The public good dimension highlights the importance of inclusivity in thermal environment decision-making, aiming to ensure that all students have equitable access to thermally comfortable conditions regardless of microclimatic variations or spatial disparities within learning environments. Achieving this requires a more nuanced understanding of how thermal demands vary across different educational stages and age groups, from early childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Current assessment frameworks often treat students as a monolithic user group, thereby overlooking important differences in physiological sensitivity, behavioral autonomy, and activity rhythms. Embedding these distinctions into spatial planning and policy design will help realize the ESG principle’s commitment to social equity and environmental justice. Such efforts reflect deeper commitments to social equity and environmental justice. The corporate governance dimension, in turn, calls for collaborative design and shared governance of thermal environments through the development of incentive-driven governance frameworks that enable private-sector actors to assume greater responsibility for social welfare and environmental sustainability in the educational context. These frameworks can foster more socially responsible modes of managing indoor thermal environments. By operationalizing participatory thermal comfort governance mechanisms, meaningful engagement from a broad range of stakeholders, such as students, teachers, parents, and enterprises, can be facilitated to ensure that diverse needs are equitably represented. This approach offers interdisciplinary theoretical grounding and practical guidance for cultivating educational environments that are fairer, more transparent, and inherently more sustainable.

6. Conclusions

In the context of accelerating climate change, growing energy demand, and heightened concerns over environmental equity, the assessment of thermal comfort in educational buildings has become increasingly critical. Thermal comfort affects not only energy efficiency and environmental performance but also directly influences student well-being, social inclusivity, and equitable access to high-quality indoor environments. Through a comprehensive review of the past decade’s research on thermal comfort in educational settings, and by integrating key findings within the ESG framework, this study identifies three central research themes: climate resilience, MHCD, and energy decarbonization. These thematic pillars form the basis for a theoretically robust ESG-driven evaluation framework.

From the standpoint of thermal comfort, research has predominantly focused on promoting student health and well-being. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have adopted multimodal assessment approaches that combine subjective perception, physiological responses, environmental parameters, and behavioral feedback. These methods address the limitations of single-model evaluations and improve the adaptability and contextual relevance of thermal comfort assessments across diverse climate zones and educational stages. In terms of energy consumption, existing research has primarily concentrated on enhancing demand-side energy efficiency through passive and active design strategies. By contrast, relatively limited attention has been given to supply-side approaches, especially those involving the integration of renewable energy systems. This imbalance underscores the pressing need for future studies to construct integrated optimization frameworks that simultaneously address thermal demand and long-term energy transition objectives.

Building on these insights, this study proposes an ESG-aligned research framework encompassing seven actionable dimensions. Future research should place greater emphasis on public goods and governance principles to promote inclusive and equitable decision-making processes in thermal comfort planning. Strengthening collaboration between policymakers and private-sector stakeholders will also be vital in delivering sustainable infrastructure solutions for educational environments. Furthermore, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent, educational buildings must be designed to exhibit greater adaptive capacity in order to maintain stable and safe indoor thermal conditions. In summary, this study not only distills the key developments in thermal comfort research within educational buildings over the past decade but also offers a theoretically informed and practice-oriented pathway toward sustainable, equitable, and human-centered environmental transformation.