Renewable Energy Applications and Energy Saving in Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid growth of world energy use has already caused energy shortage problems. The exhaustion of fossil fuel energy resources and the severe environmental impacts of fossil fuels have seriously hindered sustainable global development. Also, the contribution of energy consumption from buildings, both residential and commercial, has steadily increased and now comprises approximately 30–40% of the overall energy use in developed countries. For developing countries, population growth and urbanization, increasing demand for building services and comfort levels, together with the increase in time spent within buildings assure that the sharp, rising trend in building energy use will continue for a long time.

Usually, two methods are utilized for reducing building energy use, viz., the integration of renewable energy technologies with buildings and the development of advanced energy saving technologies. Thus, to further spread the technologies and methods related to building energy saving, a Special Issue entitled “Renewable Energy Applications and Energy Saving in Buildings” was proposed for the international journal of “Sustainability”, which is an SSCI and SCI Expanded journal (2013 IF=1.077).

This Special Issue will mainly encompass original research and studies related to the above two topics. Although the following list is not exhaustive, issues of particular interest include solar energy, building-integrated photovoltaic/thermal systems, wind power, ground-source heat pumps, biomass energy, energy storage technologies, green buildings and their evaluation, distributed energy systems, energy efficiency technologies in buildings, district cooling/heating systems, combined cooling, heating, and power systems, new materials in buildings, etc. Papers selected for this Special Issue will have been subject to a rigorous peer review procedure. The journal aims to rapidly and widely spread research results, developments, and applications.

We invite you to submit your original work to this Special Issue, and look forward to receiving your outstanding research outputs!

Best Regards!

Dr. Lin Lu
Dr. Jinqing Peng
Dr. Fu Xiao
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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