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Smart Management and Net-Zero Carbon Buildings

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2024) | Viewed by 3000

Special Issue Editor

Institute of Sustainable Building Design, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK
Interests: building physics; environmental modelling in hygrothermal control; building energy efficiency; artificial neural network applications in indoor environmental control; policy making
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues:

The building and construction sector shares a large proportion of global energy usage and accounts for approximate 40% of energy-related CO2 emissions. The development of low or net-zero energy buildings and smart energy management strategy can play a crucial role in reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. However, rising integration of distributed energy resources can pose challenges for the reliability of grid operation. The building sector accounts for a large ratio of final energy usage and energy-related carbon emissions. Wide development of advanced metering infrastructure facilitates the interaction between the grid and buildings, exploring the energy flexibility in demand side. Predictive control and data-driven energy management strategies provide new chances to  build while reducing the energy use or cost.

As climate change urges us to take action to preserve the planet, another dimension is emerging for the already challenging heritage industry, a very expensive business. We are facing a trilemma in balancing the competitive needs for the three piles of sustainability in managing our historical treasures. Preservation of our heritage, from historical buildings to archaeological sites and from paintings to collections, demands care that is often expensive and energy intensive. 

 For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Smart control in special buildings for energy efficiency and indoor environment quality
    • Low-carbon solutions in care homes
    • Cultural institution buildings
    • Definition and evaluation of net-zero carbon buildings
  • Conservation of buildings (historical buildings and sites)
    • Assessment methods of renovation options
    • Energy efficiency and refurbishment
    • Developments of distributed energy resources
  • AI applications in building management
    • IT technologies for knowledge, conservation and restoration
    • AI application in BMS systems
    • Predictive modelling to support event management
    • Data-driven control for building hybrid energy systems  
  • Grid interactive buildings
    • Energy flexibility evaluation and renewable energy utilization
    • Energy resilience and extreme weather impacts
    • Distributed building energy systems                                      

Dr. Fan Wang
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 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. Sustainability 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 2400 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

  • building energy systems
  • distributed energy resources
  • AI control and management

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

31 pages, 3672 KiB  
Article
Including Embodied Carbon in Assessing Renovation Options for Industrial Heritage Buildings: A Review and Case Studies
by Yidong Huang, Fan Wang, Alex Vidal Hiscock, Jivantika Satyarthi and Harry Smith
Sustainability 2025, 17(1), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17010072 - 26 Dec 2024
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2473
Abstract
Industrial buildings play vital roles in a society, from shaping the economic, technological, cultural, and social fabric of society to contributing to its growth, development, and resilience. Hence, often at the end of their lifespans, they are “preserved” for their historical value through [...] Read more.
Industrial buildings play vital roles in a society, from shaping the economic, technological, cultural, and social fabric of society to contributing to its growth, development, and resilience. Hence, often at the end of their lifespans, they are “preserved” for their historical value through renovation. Considerations for renovation often include their historical significance, structural integrity, adaptive reuse, social sustainability, financial viability, and environmental impacts. Among these considerations, the carbon emissions associated with a project are increasingly becoming a factor of relevance when a historical building is to be sensitively renovated so that it can continue to contribute to local sustainability. However, embodied carbon is often overshadowed by operational carbon and overlooked in the development of renovation options. This paper argues for the need to include embodied carbon in the consideration of any renovation process and for guidelines for doing so. The argument is built upon a systematic review of current practices in the renovation of industrial heritage buildings across selected representative countries from the Global South and the Global North, in the belief that the former could learn valuable lessons from the latter, which has more extensive experience in considering embodied carbon in such processes. The argument also shows the difference in policy between different countries and articulates how the inclusion of embodied carbon might support environmental targets in the Global South. Based on a quantitative comparison, this review explains why embodied carbon (EC) is missing in renovations of industrial heritage buildings in the Global South. This study estimates the proportion and value of EC within the total life cycle in renovations of industrial buildings to support the argument. Above all, a calculation using a standard life cycle assessment (LCA) tool (ISO14040 & 14044) applied to four successful examples and a quantitative comparison highlight the benefits of including embodied carbon in renovations of industrial buildings and the carbon savings in the Global South and further supports our argument. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Management and Net-Zero Carbon Buildings)
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