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Optimizing Energy Efficiency and Thermal Comfort in Buildings, 2nd Edition

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "G: Energy and Buildings".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 November 2026 | Viewed by 821

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Ingénieur pour l’Environnement (LASIE, UMR CNRMS 7356), La Rochelle Université, 17000 La Rochelle, France
Interests: energy efficiency in building; thermal engineering; building simulation; green building
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to share the success of our Special Issue “Optimizing Energy Efficiency and Thermal Comfort in Building” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/special_issues/3248XG6R0X). We are now preparing to launch the second edition of this Special Issue and are pleased to invite you to submit your papers to Energies.

Today, it is widely accepted that climate change is a global phenomenon. Not only is the average temperature rising but heatwaves are also becoming more frequent. In addition, at present, the construction industry is not particularly adapted to extreme heat. Thus, research is necessary not only to analyse how building design will impact the climate but also how the future climate will impact building design.

On the other hand, the design of buildings aims to achieve a number of objectives in terms of energy consumption and the quality of indoor environments, which are often in conflict with each other. Thus, managing conflicting criteria in building design optimization is a real challenge that needs to be addressed.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to methods, modelling, experimentation, and application for optimizing energy-efficient design in tandem with thermal comfort for indoor spaces.

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

  • Optimal design methodologies;
  • Multi-objective optimization;
  • Advanced modelling approaches;
  • Suitable design of experiments;
  • Energy efficiency measures;
  • Thermal comfort assessment;
  • Efficient cooling and heating systems.

Prof. Dr. Christian Inard
Guest Editor

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. 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.

Keywords

  • design
  • optimization
  • modelling
  • experimentation
  • thermal comfort
  • energy efficiency

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

26 pages, 2981 KB  
Article
Assessing Collective Self-Consumption in Early Urban Planning Stages: What Matters Most?
by Stéphane Pawlak, Jérôme Le Dréau, Christian Inard and Aymeric Novel
Energies 2026, 19(6), 1550; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19061550 - 20 Mar 2026
Viewed by 402
Abstract
The deployment of distributed renewable energy systems at the neighborhood scale is a key lever for urban decarbonization. In Europe, the regulatory framework now enables collective self-consumption, allowing multiple end-users to share locally produced energy. However, the complexity and early-stage uncertainties of such [...] Read more.
The deployment of distributed renewable energy systems at the neighborhood scale is a key lever for urban decarbonization. In Europe, the regulatory framework now enables collective self-consumption, allowing multiple end-users to share locally produced energy. However, the complexity and early-stage uncertainties of such projects, especially in new district development, pose challenges for feasibility assessment and investor confidence. This study proposes a method to identify the impact of numerous technical, economic, and social parameters that may affect the feasibility of a project and that are uncertain at the early design stage, across multiple key performance indicators, thus addressing the concerns of various stakeholders. A key objective is to provide an integrated method applicable during the early stages of district development, when the integration of a collective self-consumption scheme is under consideration. The developed tools and methods are compatible with the available data at this stage and provide a basis for multi-criteria analysis. The simulation workflow was built around URBANopt and enhanced with probabilistic occupancy modeling, energy sharing mechanisms, and financial analysis modules. It was further complemented by sensitivity and risk analysis layers. The method was applied to a pre-design case study, illustrating how key design and operational uncertainties influence project viability. The results showed that despite the uncertainties on a wide array of parameters, reliable risk assessment per KPI could be performed on only a handful of parameters, which were identified through a sensitivity analysis using the Morris screening method. Full article
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