Energy Efficient Buildings for Current and Future Climate

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is a complex and global phenomenon, in which the human activity impact is clearer and more evident every day.  The impact of climate change currently represents a huge threat to natural environments, as well as to human life. The effects of climate change are already visible in current climate scenarios, with the prevalence of extreme weather events such temperature increase, floods, storms and heat/cold waves, as well as their impact on human health and activity. Thus, future projections indicate the aggravation of these scenarios and the continuity of temperature increase, more frequent and severe extreme events, hot summers and rigorous winters is expected in different locations of our planet.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change boosts efforts to decarbonise the building stock. As buildings are very long-lived and a large proportion of the total building stock existing today will still exist in 2050, retrofitting the existing stock is key to a low-emission building sector.  These existing buildings are especially vulnerable to climate change reducing its lifetime. In the future, there may be an increase in the risk of collapse, declining state and significant loss of value as a result of more extreme events, inducing severe impacts for occupants, deteriorating indoor thermal and air quality and causing important health effects.  We need to act immediately but the design approaches should no longer be based on past experience; rather, these should be based on the calculated projections of future climate but the uncertainty over future weather patterns may encourage demand for mechanical space heating and/or cooling regardless of the climate-zone damaging the efforts to decarbonize the existing stock and build in a more suitable way.

The European Union also defined several climate and energy goals to achieve a proper response to this challenge, being that the building sector play an important role in both mitigation and adaptation strategies. New and existing buildings need to be assessed for resilience to current risks and future climate changes, and planned or upgraded accordingly. Energy efficient buildings—either new construction or retrofit interventions—are key to achieve proper energy and thermal performances, as climate-resilient solutions for current and future scenarios that not only contribute to the decrease in energy consumption and emissions, but also meet the expected increase of comfort requirements and other major challenges such as the eradication of energy poverty. 

Therefore, this Special Issue seeks contributions that address the challenge of sharing new ideas and proposals to face the problems and will certainly contribute to inspire the development and creation of new preventive or corrective activities in the face of the observed and expected phenomena and impacts of climate change.

Prof. João Carlos Gonçalves Lanzinha
Guest Editor

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• affordable and adaptable buildings
• buildings energy control and adaptation
• energy efficiency of buildings
• energy renovation strategies for future climate
• district heating and cooling networks
• energy efficiency policies, laws, targets and plans
• fuel poverty in buildings
• passive cooling techniques
• solar-powered systems
• weather forecasting and renewable energy generation