Guest Editors
Anastasios Dounis, Department of Automation, University of West Attica, Greece. Email: aidounis@uniwa.gr
Zhenling Liu, Henan University of Technology, China. Email: liuzlhaut@gmail.com
Summary
With the improvement of living standards, the requirements of buildings for electricity, heating and cooling are increasing, but these are the reasons for a large amount of fossil energy consumption and serious environmental pollution. Buildings, being responsible for over a third of the world’s total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, have a critical role to play in the global drive for sustainable development. This situation, along with increasing global warming, requires increasing efforts to find innovative solutions that reduce energy demands in new and existing buildings, maximize the efficiency of technical systems and ensure high levels of comfort.
Compared with industry, transportation, and agriculture, the building sector exhibits the greatest potential to save energy. The new demand deriving from the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda is to build and renovate buildings in an efficient way, reducing energy consumption and waste of resources. These objectives can be achieved by increasing renewables, using intelligent control, and monitoring systems for consumption, using recycled materials that do not involve waste of resources.
In the light of the above, this Special Issue aims to demonstrate the recent advances in renewable energy in smart buildings from a sustainability perspective. The potential topics for this special issue include but are not limited to:
Sustainability aspects of green building materials
Renewable energy sources for smart buildings
Renewable energy storage to save energy in buildings
Building integrated renewables
Energy conservation and management in buildings
Recycling, reuse, regeneration, and recovery of waste
Energy efficiency and renewable energy for cities’ energy transition
Sustainable management of green assets using smart technologies
Barriers inhibiting sustainable construction
Sustainable infrastructure construction
Keywords
Renewable energy; Sustainability; Smart buildings