Energy Saving for Sustainable Built Environment, Climate, and City

Dear Colleagues,

The Guest Editors are inviting submissions for a Special Issue that addresses radically innovative approaches and frameworks of energy saving problems and energy production security in relation to the progressive effects of anthropogenic global climate change. It is exceptionally important in the current state of the built environment, especially for cities and world societies that are committed to sustainable development. Achieving energy savings with an impact on climate change will require decoupling economic growth from energy consumption and reinforced measures in all countries and in all economic sectors, and moreover an appropriate management (top-down vs. bottom-up energy policy making). There is the urgent need to formulate and implement of a new vision of the integration and management of various renewable energy sources in one facility. Architecture and urban planning are areas that integrate various activities in this matter, giving them the new visionary form and spatial logic.

In particular, we are seeking feature papers that consider the following:

1. Reducing greenhouse gases requires resignation from the current technology of obtaining energy and its use. Editors are encouraged to present their own visions, the implementation of innovative ideas, especially when the main aim is to achieve climate-friendly, energy-saving architecture and urbanism — energetic independence and self-efficiency, energy diversity, and security of buildings and their complexes. It is a retreat from a centralized system of power plants towards decentralized production energy. The papers should also focus on an attempt to apply derivative natural phenomena, behaviors and processes that may influence the shaping of spatial forms in architectural and urban design that safely integrates energy production from various renewable sources.

2. The models of climatic action warn of natural hazards associated with weather. The crux priority nowadays is a movement addressing the interwoven challenge of sustainable development, disaster risk, and climate change, in face of the fact overhelming majority of documented major disasters provoked by natural threats, were associated with weather and climate — droughts, heatwaves, storms and floods. The climatic action poses challenges for the built environment, its structural stability, and energy production security and water supply, especially in cities. Anthropogenic weather phenomena are already destabilizing energy forecasts, and soon they will become a destructive force for some devices and installations producing renewable energy. The authors are expected to pay attention to:

• Wind (whirlwinds, swirls, cyclones, hurricanes) is already seen as an unpredictable force that destroys buildings, ground transmission networks, wind and solar farms, both onshore and offshore. Not only can floating offshore wind plants, floating solar plants, and electricity generation from tidal streams be endangered by cyclones and hurricanes formed in the oceans, but also by tsunamis caused by tectonic movements under the seabed.
• Climate change is also expected to modify the hydrological cycle resulting in impacts on water availability on a large scale. However, future climate change impact assessments are highly uncertain. The results show some regions exhibiting a large spread in projected changes in water resources within the climate-hydrology modelling chain. Drought and seasonally high temperatures require increased energy and water consumption to sustain life, which causes water levels to decline in rivers and reservoirs leading to the reduction of the energy efficiency of small and large hydroelectric plants. Floods and local inundations threaten primarily small home power plants.

3. Cities occupying approximately 2% of the Earth's surface are responsible for 70% of global energy consumption, 75% of global resource usage and 80% of total pollution and greenhouse gases emissions. In addition, urban areas are also responsible for air pollution by concentrating vehicle traffic and generating toxic waste. Thus the production of rubbish proceeds approximately in parallel with the consumption of resources. The shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy will have a number of consequences. Research analyzing the political, social and environmental dimensions of this change is expected. Research into the role of energy regimes and the search for energy security play in shaping societies and their effects are also important. The implementation of the new vision of new energy driven cities must be preceded by appropriate changes in legal and financial systems. Research in this area may indicate bottlenecks and obstacles to the actual implementation of the new vision and ways to make the new vision alive.

The research presented in this Special Issue here could be in line with the European Green Deal program, providing an attractive alternative approach to the decarbonization process of Europe. 

Dr. Krystyna Januszkiewicz
Prof. Dr. Paszkowski Zbigniew Władysław
Dr. Wiśniewski Sławomir
Guest Editors

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Energies 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.

• sustainable architecture
• urbanism and new challenges energy saving
• independence and self-efficiency energy diversity and storage
• energy production and climatic action
• security of energy production
• energy-water-food-environment
• nexus ground thermal energy production
• solar radiation and purification
• thermal comfort in cities
• energy management and policy