Sustainable Development: Emerging Trends in Energy Efficiency, Carbon Reduction, and Green Building Materials

On 4 March, World Engineering for Sustainable Development Day provides an opportunity to highlight what engineers and engineering have achieved in our modern world and to raise public understanding of how engineering and technology are at the heart of modern life and sustainable development. Here, we provide an overview of a Special Issue of Buildings entitled “Sustainable Development: Emerging Trends in Energy Efficiency, Carbon Reduction, and Green Building Materials” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/special_issues/Sustainable_Carbon, last accessed 22 January 2023) and the scientific papers it hosts.

This Special Issue aims to report on Sustainable Development: New Trends in Energy Conservation, Carbon Reduction, and Green Building Materials, and to build a global partnership for sustainable development to improve buildings and human life and protect the environment. The construction industry is one of the largest resource-consuming industries in the world, including the extraction of materials, consumption of energy and water, and generation of waste. Sustainability is, therefore, a key objective of the national circular economy policy—a regenerative economy in which the negative impact of the construction industry on the environment is minimized.

This Special Issue is dedicated to the publication of papers describing the most important research in building materials, repairs, and renovations, with a focus on advanced, sustainable, or green buildings, which could have an impact on the construction industry based on innovative and circular economic principles. International research teams from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Jordan, and Taiwan published six original research papers. All of these contributions address topics considered effective or regional efforts, including environmental assessment of insulation materials [1], life cycle assessment (LCA) [2,3,4,5], environmentally friendly flame retardants, PLA/PBS biocomposites [6,7], decarbonization strategies, building information modeling (BIM), building decarbonization [8], high-rise residential buildings, Anchor Pile with Steel Cable Systems (APSCS), CO₂ curing, fiber-porous concrete, sustainable construction methods [9], high-strength pervious concrete, and circular economies [10].

Liu et al. [11] reported a sustainable case study on construction methods and a circular economy using a unique method of excavation protection for building foundations. According to the authors’ introduction, the application of the APSCS method in the Linkou public rental housing project was successful and has reference significance for other similar projects. An estimated USD 12 million was saved in construction costs, and the construction period was shortened by up to three months.

Lee et al. [12] studied the mechanical properties of ordinary and high-strength pervious concrete using steel or glass fibers. The authors concluded that the high-strength pervious concrete specimen with 2% steel fiber content had a higher compressive strength of 52.8 MPa at 28 days. In addition, both glass fiber and steel fiber can improve the bending toughness and toughness factor to a certain extent, and the mechanical properties of steel fiber are better.

Wang et al. [13] studied the mechanical properties of CO₂-curing Portland cement concrete. The authors found that CO₂ was active in fresh Portland cement concrete. Concrete cured by CO₂ has higher early compressive strength than concrete cured by water. When it reaches an age of 28 days, the compressive strength of CO₂-cured concrete is close to that of water-cured concrete.

Alotaibi et al. [14] published an article on decarbonization strategies and carbon-containing life cycle assessments for tall residential buildings. They concluded that the carbon emissions of the selected buildings were approximately 400 kg CO₂eq/m²/year and evaluated different decarbonization strategies, which could be reduced to 135 kg CO₂e/m²/year using the first analysis as a baseline.

Shi et al. [15] focused their attention on exploiting the flammability, thermal stability, and mechanical properties of PLA/PBS composites. They reported that the P/15B/15PA-Arg biocomposite increased total heat release rate, peak heat release rate, and coke residue by about 108 MJ/m², 280 kW/m², and 10%, respectively. The mechanical results showed that the performance of P/15B/PA-Arg series biocomposites was better than that of the P/15B/PA-PEI series.

Alotaibi et al. [16] reported the comprehensive thermal performance and LCA for the environmental assessment of insulating materials technology in Saudi Arabia. The analysis results show that the material density is the main parameter affecting the GWP of insulating materials. Viewing insulation materials and applications as a combination of thermal and environmental performance parameters provides a powerful tool for customizing insulation applications in various climates.

The Guest Editors of this Special Issue thank all the authors for their scientific support and for sharing their knowledge in different fields of research related to “Sustainability in Buildings”. The Guest Editors thank the peer reviewers for their rigorous scrutiny and analysis of the Issue’s contributions, as well as the managing editors involved in this Special Issue for their assistance.