Green Building Energy Performances: Environmental and Sustainability Aspects

Dear Colleagues，

Buildings and districts sit at the center of the energy–climate challenge. While improving operational energy performance remains essential, it is increasingly clear that “green” outcomes must be assessed holistically, including embodied impacts, resource use, indoor environmental quality, and resilience across the life cycle. At the same time, architects, engineers, and building-physics researchers are developing powerful combinations of monitoring, simulation, and data-driven methods that can connect design intentions with operational outcomes more reliably and transparently. This Special Issue, “Green Building Energy Performances: Environmental and Sustainability Aspects,” invites authors to submit original research articles and comprehensive reviews that advance the measurement, prediction, improvement, and verification of energy performance in green and sustainable buildings while explicitly integrating environmental dimensions such as operational and embodied carbon, materials, circularity, and climate adaptation. 

We welcome contributions spanning new and existing buildings, retrofit and deep renovation, and building–systems integration. Submissions that bridge disciplines—for example, linking building-physics analysis to architectural decisions (form, envelope, and daylighting) or integrating HVAC and control optimization with life-cycle sustainability assessment—are particularly encouraged. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Operational energy performance of green buildings (measured vs. modeled data; M&V; post-occupancy evaluation; and performance gaps).
• Performance-based design approaches connecting architectural choices (envelope, glazing, shading, daylighting, and passive strategies) to energy and carbon outcomes.
• Building physics of high-performance envelopes: airtightness, thermal bridges, heat–air–moisture transport, hygrothermal durability, and overheating mitigation. 
• Low-carbon building energy systems (heat pumps, advanced HVAC, ventilation strategies, and storage) and their environmental trade-offs: building-integrated renewables and optimal integration with energy management, demand flexibility, and building-to-grid interactions.
• Life-cycle sustainability: LCA/LCC of energy efficiency measures and systems; embodied carbon accounting; circular economy strategies: indoor environmental quality (IEQ), health, and comfort, including the energy–IEQ balance in sustainable buildings.
• Data-driven and physics-informed methods for prediction, benchmarking, calibration, and fault detection (e.g., digital twins and hybrid modeling): retrofit and deep renovation strategies for existing buildings (including dense urban contexts and heritage/historic constraints where relevant). 
• Urban- and district-scale assessment and simulation of building energy and sustainability (e.g., UBEM, district energy modeling, urban microclimate interactions, outdoor comfort, and climate-sensitive urban design). 
• Climate adaptation and resilience: extreme weather impacts, passive survivability, robust design and operation under climate uncertainty. 

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Energies.

Dr. Giovanni Pernigotto
Guest Editor

Dr. Mario Alves da Silva
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• green buildings
• building energy performance
• building physics
• energy efficiency
• performance gap
• post-occupancy evaluation
• calibrated simulation
• net-zero carbon
• embodied carbon
• life-cycle assessment
• circular economy
• retrofit
• indoor environmental quality
• smart controls
• demand flexibility
• resilience
• UBEM
• urban microclimate
• district-scale modeling