Towards Healthy and Low-Carbon Indoor Environments: Innovations in HVAC and Building Design

Dear Colleagues,

Creating indoor environments that are both healthy and energy-efficient is an urgent challenge in the context of climate change, urbanization, and post-pandemic building use. Buildings account for a significant share of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, with heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems playing a central role. As people spend over 90% of their time indoors, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) critically affects health, comfort, and productivity. Recent global challenges—including the COVID-19 pandemic, energy crises, and extreme climate events—have underscored the need for building systems that can deliver both healthy indoor conditions and energy-efficient performance. However, traditional design approaches often prioritize one aspect, leading to trade-offs between occupant well-being and sustainability goals. Although many studies have addressed energy-efficient HVAC systems or IEQ independently, integrated approaches that jointly optimize both remain underexplored. The integration of advanced technologies, passive and hybrid ventilation strategies, personalized thermal comfort solutions, smart controls, and data-driven optimization methods offers promising opportunities to overcome these trade-offs. A holistic and interdisciplinary perspective is urgently needed to foster indoor environments that are both low-carbon and human-centric. This Special Issue aims to bridge this gap by highlighting innovative research in low-carbon HVAC solutions, indoor air quality improvement, personalized environmental control, and sustainable building design, welcoming theoretical modeling, experimental studies, and case applications. It will advance the synergy between sustainable design and human-centered indoor environments, complementing existing literature on energy efficiency, green buildings, and healthy indoor environments.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research and review articles that advance our understanding of how to create indoor environments that are simultaneously healthy, comfortable, and low in energy and carbon footprints. It encourages interdisciplinary collaboration between HVAC engineers, building scientists, environmental health researchers, and data scientists. The focus aligns closely with the scope of Sustainability, which emphasizes environmental, social, and technological aspects of sustainable development. By addressing the synergies and trade-offs between energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality, this Special Issue will provide valuable insights and practical solutions for achieving sustainable, resilient, and livable built environments.

We welcome theoretical, experimental, simulation-based, and applied studies on topics including (but not limited to):

• Low-carbon and sustainable HVAC system innovation;
• Advanced ventilation strategies for health and comfort;
• Energy-efficient indoor environment design;
• Smart buildings, automation, and predictive control technologies;
• Post-pandemic resilient building operation;
• Human-centered and climate-adaptive architecture;
• Renewable energy integration in building energy systems;
• Comprehensive building performance evaluation methods;
• Low-carbon HVAC system design and optimization;
• Passive and hybrid ventilation strategies;
• Indoor air quality improvement and pollution control;
• Thermal comfort and personalized indoor environments;
• Smart control systems and building automation for HVAC;
• Data-driven modeling and predictive control;
• Post-pandemic building operation and ventilation;
• Climate-responsive building design;
• Human-centered approaches in sustainable architecture;
• Integration of renewable energy with HVAC systems;
• Building performance assessment and case studies.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Xiaolei Yuan
Dr. Yu Wang
Dr. Haizhou Fang
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.

• healthy buildings
• low-carbon HVAC
• thermal comfort
• indoor air quality
• decarbonization
• passive design
• personalized environment