energies-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

Advances in Green Building Technologies

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "G: Energy and Buildings".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 December 2021) | Viewed by 17278

Special Issue Editors

Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Northumbria University, Sutherland Building, Northumberland Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: climate-smart infrastructure; public–private partnership (PPP); procurement; carbon management and green building technologies in construction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The world is facing unprecedented sustainability challenges, with climate change threatening humanity. Greenhouse gas emissions, the root cause of climate change, continue to increase, year after year, reaching “new record highs” in 2018, as reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Buildings account for a significant percentage of about 40% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, to reach the ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement to deal with the threat of climate change by keeping the rise in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, it is very important to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. This can be achieved through adopting and implementing green building technologies. In addition to reducing building-related greenhouse gas emissions and protecting the environment through energy efficiency, green building technologies further contribute to sustainability by helping to develop buildings that are water efficient, healthy, and save costs such as those relating to operation and maintenance.

This Special Issue encourages both academic and industrial researchers to present their latest research findings on green building and green building technologies adoption, application, and promotion within the building and construction sector. Findings on green building technologies enabling zero or low carbon buildings, zero or low energy buildings, zero or low water buildings, zero or low waste construction, and zero sick buildings development are particularly welcomed. The goal is to provide readers with findings that are comprehensive, unbiased, and grounded in scientifically and methodologically sound research, and that make significant new contributions to the theory and practice on green building and green building technologies.

Dr. Ernest Effah Ameyaw
Prof. Dr. Albert P. C. Chan
Dr. Amos Darko
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. Energies 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 2600 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.

Keywords

  • Green building
  • Green building technologies
  • Sustainable construction
  • Greenhouse gas emissions
  • Climate change
  • Zero or low carbon buildings
  • Zero or low energy buildings
  • Zero or low water buildings
  • Zero or low waste construction
  • Zero sick buildings

Published Papers (5 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

38 pages, 2000 KiB  
Article
COVID-19 and Green Housing: A Review of Relevant Literature
by Arturas Kaklauskas, Natalija Lepkova, Saulius Raslanas, Ingrida Vetloviene, Virgis Milevicius and Jevgenij Sepliakov
Energies 2021, 14(8), 2072; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14082072 - 08 Apr 2021
Cited by 32 | Viewed by 5431
Abstract
This review presents an analysis of three hypotheses. The articles provide a specific perspective on green housing before, during, and post COVID-19. The validations of these hypotheses were performed by analyzing the scientific literature worldwide and by adding a statistical analysis of appropriate [...] Read more.
This review presents an analysis of three hypotheses. The articles provide a specific perspective on green housing before, during, and post COVID-19. The validations of these hypotheses were performed by analyzing the scientific literature worldwide and by adding a statistical analysis of appropriate articles from the Scopus database. The purpose of this review is to overview the research written on housing developments during the upsurge of COVID-19 along with the responses from the green building sector, because this field appears to be rapidly emerging by the sheer volume of research studies currently undertaken. Foremost peer-reviewed journals covering construction, urban studies, real estate, energy, civil engineering, buildings, indoor air, management, economics, business, environmental studies, and environmental sciences that were published last year were selected for review. The review was conducted by applying a combination of various keywords and the criteria for paper selection, including sustainable building, green construction, green building, resource-efficient, a building’s lifecycle, COVID-19, energy, water, consumption, health effects, comfort, occupant behaviors, policy, economy, Industry 5.0, energy-efficient retrofitting, and profit. Two, innovative elements in this study stand out when comparing it with the most advanced research on green housing before, during, and after COVID-19. The first innovation relates to the integrated analyses of COVID-19 pandemic, housing policies of countries and cities pertinent to COVID-19 that impact green housing and the wellbeing of their residents as well as the impact made by residents and a housing policy on the dispersion of COVID-19. This research additionally establishes that a green building analysis is markedly more effective when the analysis comprehensively covers the life process of a green building, the participating interest groups that have their own goals they wish to implement, the COVID-19 situation, and the external micro- and macro-level environments as a singular entity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Green Building Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 1861 KiB  
Article
Green Building Adoption on Office Markets in Europe: An Empirical Investigation into LEED Certification
by Michal Gluszak, Agnieszka Malkowska and Bartłomiej Marona
Energies 2021, 14(7), 1971; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14071971 - 02 Apr 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2663
Abstract
The goal of the paper is to evaluate the impact of selected factors on the adoption of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building certification in Europe. In the empirical part of the paper we track the fraction of LEED-registered office [...] Read more.
The goal of the paper is to evaluate the impact of selected factors on the adoption of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building certification in Europe. In the empirical part of the paper we track the fraction of LEED-registered office space in selected European cities, and assess the impact of selected socioeconomic and environmental factors on the certification adoption rate. This research contributes to the ongoing debate about the adoption of green buildings in commercial property markets. In this paper, we investigate factors affecting the adoption of LEED certification using the Arellano and Bond generalized method-of-moments estimator. Compared to prior studies, which relied on cross-sectional data, our research uses a panel approach to investigate the changes in green building adoption rates in selected European cities. Among the cities that are quickly adopting LEED are Frankfurt, Warsaw, Stockholm, and Dublin. The adoption process was not equally fast in Brussels and Copenhagen. Using the dynamic panel model approach, we found that the adoption of green building certification is linked to overall innovativeness in the economy and the perceived greenness of the city. Contrary to some previous studies we did not observe links between the size of the office market and the LEED adoption rate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Green Building Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 2066 KiB  
Article
Understanding of Construction Product Assessment Issues and Sustainability among Investors, Architects, Contractors, and Sellers of Construction Products in Poland
by Jacek Michalak and Bartosz Michałowski
Energies 2021, 14(7), 1941; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14071941 - 31 Mar 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2101
Abstract
The building sector is one of the most critical branches of the economy influencing global warming today. Following the European Union’s Construction Products Regulation (CPR), the sustainable use of natural resources in construction is one of the seven basic buildings’ requirements. However, due [...] Read more.
The building sector is one of the most critical branches of the economy influencing global warming today. Following the European Union’s Construction Products Regulation (CPR), the sustainable use of natural resources in construction is one of the seven basic buildings’ requirements. However, due to the lack of provisions in this regard, construction products are not yet subject to mandatory assessment and verification of the constancy of performance in this area. The paper presents the research results with the participation of 842 respondents who are investors, architects, contractors, and sellers of building materials. The analysis of their perceptions of issues related to the term sustainable development and knowledge of selected documents functioning in construction is presented. The share of people who correctly assigned the term sustainable development to equal treatment of environmental protection, economic development, and social development ranged between 52.5% and 65.7%. Knowledge of people associated with construction about the role of the declaration of performance (DoP) of construction products is high (from 73.9% to 99.4% correct answers). For Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), lower knowledge of this document’s role was noted, from 24.1% to 56.5% of correct answers. The obtained results indicate the need for further education. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Green Building Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 3234 KiB  
Article
Engineering Parameters of Rice Straw Concrete with Granulated Blast Furnace Slag
by Taha Ashour, Mohamad Morsy, Azra Korjenic, Henriette Fischer, Mervat Khalil, Eldira Sesto, Mohammed Orabi and Ibrahim Yehia
Energies 2021, 14(2), 343; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14020343 - 09 Jan 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2436
Abstract
The construction industry is responsible for a large amount of both embodied carbon and emissions. Especially with concrete, there is still a lot of potential for designing recipes in a more ecological way. Approaches to reduce the environmental impact of concrete include the [...] Read more.
The construction industry is responsible for a large amount of both embodied carbon and emissions. Especially with concrete, there is still a lot of potential for designing recipes in a more ecological way. Approaches to reduce the environmental impact of concrete include the use of industrial and agricultural by-products. This study combines the approaches of replacing cement with granulated blast furnace slag and the use of NaOH-treated rice straw fibers. The research objective comprises the design of an ecologically optimized concrete as well as the question of whether a pretreatment of rice straw fibers with NaOH improves the performance of the designed concrete. The method includes mechanical and physical testing of the of the designed concrete as well as an optical analysis with a scanning electron microscope. The results indicated that treating rice straw with 1% NaOH indicates a better bond between fibers and the surrounding matrix. The tests in which the rice straw was treated with NaOH achieved a higher density, splitting strength, tensile strength and compressive strength. The study contributes an ecologically optimized concrete with granulated blast furnace slag and NaOH-treated rice straw concrete, which shows a great potential as an environmentally friendly, low-cost construction material. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Green Building Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 6606 KiB  
Article
Method for Building Information Modeling Supported Project Control of Nearly Zero-Energy Building Delivery
by Sanjin Gumbarević, Ivana Burcar Dunović, Bojan Milovanović and Mergim Gaši
Energies 2020, 13(20), 5519; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en13205519 - 21 Oct 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2901
Abstract
With the increasing number of nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB) due to increase of global awareness on climate change, the new concepts of design and control must be developed because of great NZEB dependency on detailing and multidisciplinary approach. This paper proposes a three-level [...] Read more.
With the increasing number of nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB) due to increase of global awareness on climate change, the new concepts of design and control must be developed because of great NZEB dependency on detailing and multidisciplinary approach. This paper proposes a three-level gateway control method for NZEB project delivery by using digital representation of the building in building information modeling (BIM) environment. These controls (C1, C2 and C3) are introduced before three main phases of any project delivery—design phase, construction phase and handover. The proposed project control procedure uses black-box building energy modeling within the BIM environment, so the paper explores the reliability of one tool for direct energy modeling within the BIM-authoring software. The paper shows two types of validation tests with satisfactory results. This leads to conclusion that analyzed tool for energy simulation within BIM environment can be used in a way that is described in a proposed project control procedure. For further research it is proposed to explore reliability of tools for energy simulation connected to other BIM-authoring software, so this project control procedure could be independent of BIM-authoring software used in the paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Green Building Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop