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Sustainable Design for Zero Carbon Buildings

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 2980

Special Issue Editor

School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK
Interests: zero carbon design and retrofit of buildings; embodied and operational emissions; life cycle analysis; bio-sourced materials; renewable energy; climate emergency; policy development support; advanced control of building heating and cooling and resultant savings; nature-inspired design; aligning interests of housing developers and end users; alternative economics for sustainability paradigm
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has established that global warming is likely to reach 1.5 oC or higher, above the pre-industrial levels, between years 2030 and 2052, due to greenhouse gas emissions. Impacts of such global temperature rise will be the increase in land and ocean temperatures, hot extremes, excessive rainfall and excessive droughts, and many other large scale events that can threaten our wellbeing and the sustainability of our planet. As nearly 30% of global emissions come from buildings, making zero emissions buildings is of paramount importance. Due to the building lifetime extending over several decades and the need to get emissions under control before year 2050, construction of any other buildings than zero carbon buildings would be seen as irresponsible.

This Special Issue is about consolidating state-of-the-art findings and plotting a trajectory for the future of sustainable design for zero carbon buildings. It is about stimulating a transition from the exception of a few zero carbon projects to a new norm of zero carbon design and retrofit of all buildings. Original manuscripts are invited under the following topics:

  1. New and retrofit zero carbon buildings
  2. Zero carbon villages and communities
  3. Nature-inspired zero carbon designs
  4. Off-grid developments
  5. Design methods and design tools
  6. Machine learning for zero carbon design and control
  7. New materials, construction methods and embodied energy
  8. Design for zero carbon lifecycle
  9. Advances in renewable energy systems and storage
  10. Zero carbon projects and climate change
  11. Post occupancy evaluation of zero carbon projects
  12. New business and economic models
  13. Challenges for legislation and policy
  14. Social aspects and culture change
  15. Case studies and future projects

Researchers, designers, developers and policy makers have significant opportunities and responsibilities to make a difference for our planet and our wellbeing, and we invite you to take part in helping materialise these opportunities and responsibilities.

Prof. Dr. Ljubomir Jankovic
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

  • Zero carbon building design and retrofit
  • Design methods and tools for zero carbon
  • Renewable energy
  • Off-grid developments
  • Climate change
  • Nature-inspired designs
  • Sustainable materials
  • Embodied and operational emissions
  • Sustainable economics for zero carbon
  • One planet living

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

23 pages, 16298 KiB  
Article
BioZero—Designing Nature-Inspired Net-Zero Building
by Ljubomir Jankovic and Silvio Carta
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7658; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147658 - 08 Jul 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2439
Abstract
This article introduces BioZero, a nature-inspired near-zero building proposed for Quay St, Brooklyn, New York. The building is designed for the maximum use of daylight and natural ventilation. This is the result of its shallow plan depth and the inner light wells/ventilation stacks, [...] Read more.
This article introduces BioZero, a nature-inspired near-zero building proposed for Quay St, Brooklyn, New York. The building is designed for the maximum use of daylight and natural ventilation. This is the result of its shallow plan depth and the inner light wells/ventilation stacks, which also serve the inner circulation space. The light wells/ventilation stacks are created as a result of the organic shape of the internal partitions. The building is constructed from a steel frame and hemp-lime bio-composite material (hempcrete), which smooths out the fluctuations of internal air temperature and relative humidity. The south facing façade is fitted with the Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic array that covers 90% of the opaque surface area of the façade. The design was based on nature-inspired computation, with sustainability principles as guiding constraints. The main findings are that the building achieves −227 tonnes of negative embodied carbon due to sequestration of CO2 in the hemp plant from which the material was harvested, and a net-zero operation. The main conclusions are that in the context of climate emergency, nature inspired design leads to energy efficient buildings with a high level of thermal comfort, which are buildable and sustainable. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Design for Zero Carbon Buildings)
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