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Sustainable Development in the Built Environment: Renewable Energy and Thermal Energy Storage

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, renewable energy sources have been frequently considered to replace fossil fuels in buildings and urban areas to minimize the negative environmental impacts of the built environment, mainly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Particularly, the design of net-zero energy buildings has been gaining significant attention over the past decade, made possible by adopting renewable energy sources and energy-efficiency measures. However, the intermittency of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, is challenging as it leads to uncertainty in integrating renewable and clean energy sources. Despite this issue, addressing climate change by reducing GHG emissions in buildings, in addition to increasing building resilience, remains critical. Therefore, utilization of these renewable energy sources with different energy storage systems, such as batteries and thermal storage systems, is a promising solution. These storage systems can play a vital role in creating zero-energy and zero-emission buildings, further leading to the rise of net-zero energy communities.

This Special Issue aims to collect scientific papers on recent advances in implementing renewable energy resources and energy storage systems in the built environment. This Special Issue welcomes submissions on the following topics:

  • Renewable energy sources for building integration;
  • Zero or nearly zero energy buildings;
  • Zero-emission buildings;
  • Energy storage systems;
  • Thermal energy storage systems and materials;
  • Sustainable and green buildings design;
  • Energy and thermal resiliency in buildings;
  • Building energy retrofit;
  • Future climate impacts of renewable energy sources;
  • Sustainable and green building materials;
  • Energy auditing and monitoring;
  • Building energy simulation;
  • Energy efficiency measures;
  • Building enclosure;
  • HVAC system;
  • Climate change impacts in buildings;
  • Case study evaluation (relevant to main topic)

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Dr. Reza Daneshazarian
Dr. Shahrzad Soudian
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 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

  • buildings
  • energy storage
  • building envelope
  • carbon emission
  • climate change
  • renewable energy
  • building simulations
  • building resilience

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
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  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
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Sustainability - ISSN 2071-1050Creative Common CC BY license