Special Issue "Innovations in Building Processes and Policies for the Energy Renovations of Buildings"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2020).
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Prof. Henk Visscher is chair Professor of Housing Quality and Process Innovation, at the Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. His research focus is on the energy transition of the existing housing stock in order to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. His chair focuses on process innovations that contribute to ensuring and improving the quality of housing, aspects including usability, health, safety, energy efficiency and the environmental impact of both existing and new housing. His work also includes evaluating and innovating policy, regulations and building processes aimed at improving the housing stock and making it more sustainable, while keeping the end-user central and paying particular attention to the role of the various stakeholders.
Interests: green building promotion; building energy efficiency; energy retrofit; barriers and transaction costs; behavioural approach
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite climate agreements, energy transition targets and policies concerning energy efficiency, the renovation rates have remained low. The European Union defined the goal for reducing carbon emissions in residential sectors as 88%–91% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). However, to date, 85% of EU’s 160 million existing buildings are showing thermally bad conditions, and only about 1.2% are renovated each year. Technological and financial solutions to improve rates are available, but home owners do not use them as much as intended.
Innovation of processes and policies is essential to safeguard the implementation of technology innovation in the housing energy renovation. Existing technologies are often too expensive and, in combination with many obstacles in the process, the demand by home owners is very low. Cost reductions could be achieved by industrialisation of the building industry and reducing transactions costs of the renovation processes.
This Special Issue calls for papers addressing approaches, theories, case studies and strategies on process innovation for building energy renovations. It seeks for the root problems that cause the low renovation rate from the perspectives of policy makers, market stakeholders, professionals, occupants, etc. It addresses the multifaceted phenomena with a deep understanding of the institution and process (barriers and transaction costs), people (cognition and behaviour) and resources (information, incentives and intervention) combined.
Prof. Dr. Henk Visscher
Dr. Queena K. Qian
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 papers will be 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 1900 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
- process innovation
- energy efficiency renovation
- existing housing stock
- transaction costs
- market barriers
- behavioral and cognitive biases
- policy and incentives
- renovation process