Building Design, Solar Energy and Thermal Comfort

Dear Colleagues,

A variety of issues and perspectives should be taken into consideration during the building design process; among these, energy utilization and thermal comfort have attracted significant attention. Buildings account for around 40% of the total global energy consumption, a large proportion of this is used in achieving and maintaining the desired healthy and comfortable built environment. In recent decades, the shortage of traditional fossil fuel energy and the concerns surrounding CO₂ emissions have led to more emphasis on the generalized solar energy utilization in the design of buildings in urban/rural environment.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to the theory, investigation, simulation, practice and assessment of buildings and urban/rural environmental design in relation to the energy (especially the generalized solar energy) utilization and thermal comfort issues.

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

• Solar energy in building design;
• Solar energy in community design;
• Solar energy in landscape design;
• Solar energy in urban/rural environment;
• Building environmental design;
• Building environmental assessment;
• Urban/rural environmental design;
• Urban/rural environmental assessment;
• Thermal comfort design;
• Thermal comfort assessment;
• Thermal comfort & solar energy utilization;
• Energy-saving design of built environment;
• Renewable energy utilization in the built environment.

Prof. Dr. Yu Liu
Prof. Dr. Bin Chen
Dr. Wuxing Zheng
Dr. Teng Shao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.