Environmental and Economic Optimisation of the Building Envelope for Different Climates

Dear Colleagues,

We are very pleased to invite you to submit original research articles or reviews to the Special Issue “Environmental and Economic Optimisation of the Building Envelope for Different Climates” that we are guest editing. It is related to the topics “Measuring and monitoring sustainability” and “System analysis methods, including life cycle assessment and management” to be published within the journal Sustainability.

The construction and retrofit of buildings cause substantial environmental impacts due to their significant consumption of energy as well as materials and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The reduction in these impacts can mitigate the magnitude of climate change, and there is a high potential for cost-effective energy and carbon-saving in this sector.

The design of the building envelope is, however, still mainly driven by thermal performance and acquisition costs but is not yet based on its environmental and economic life cycle impacts. This prevents the selection and promotion of design alternatives that mitigate and adapt to climate change, but there are methods to implement environmental and economic assessments at the design stage, such as the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC). The challenge is to design energy-efficient buildings that have a low environmental impact, have reasonable costs, and provide high thermal comfort during the whole life cycle, as these are usually conflicting aspects. Optimisation algorithms are increasingly applied to assist in the design of sustainable buildings, namely to find solutions for the building envelope that are optimal for each objective function (e.g., minimisation of energy use and/or costs) while providing high thermal comfort. Some studies also consider the minimisation of life cycle environmental impacts.

Environmental impacts and costs of buildings depend, however, on factors that vary from country to country, including embodied impacts that depend on material use and on their availability at the construction site; costs that are highly dependent on labour costs; and the energy use, which depends on climatic conditions. All of these considerations influence the optimal solutions for the building envelope in terms of absolute environmental impacts and costs, as well as the trade-off between environmentally and cost-optimal solutions, and all require specific studies to be completed at each location.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research articles and reviews related to the environmental and/or economic optimisation of the building envelope for one or more countries or climate regions regarding the design of sustainable and energy-efficient buildings. Both theoretical and real case studies can be considered. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• eco-efficient building envelope alternatives that minimise the life cycle environmental impacts and costs;
• environmental and economic life cycle-driven design of the building envelope;
• optimisation of the environmental and/or economic performance of the building envelope using generic or tailor-made algorithms;
• contribution of local climatic conditions and construction practices to life cycle carbon footprints, as well as the embodied energy and costs of buildings;
• trade-off between life cycle carbon footprint, embodied energy, and costs in each local context; and
• influence of regional differences in optimal solutions for the building envelope.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. José Dinis Silvestre
Prof. Dr. Zsuzsa Szalay
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.

• building sustainability assessment
• building envelope
• case studies
• Life Cycle Assessment
• Life Cycle Cost
• optimisation
• thermal performance