Dear Colleagues,

You are invited to submit manuscripts for consideration for a publication in a Special Issue on ‘Achieving true zero of combined embodied and operational emissions buildings using bio-sourced materials and renewable energy technology’ as part of the MDPI journal Sustainability.

Until recently, the process of achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions from buildings mainly focused on operational emissions—those arising from using energy in buildings. Thus, if only operational emissions are considered, a zero-emissions building could be achieved the day after the construction is complete. However, embodied emissions—those which arise from creating building materials and using them in construction—add many tonnes of carbon emissions to a building’s overall emissions balance. A true zero-emissions building is, therefore, a building that has its embodied emissions reduced over time using negative operational emissions arising from the use of renewable energy, until the total of both types of emissions is zero. These embodied emissions are higher when conventional materials, such as brick and concrete, are used, and are lower when bio-sourced materials are used instead. With bio-sourced materials, which absorb carbon during the growth of the plant from which they originate, the starting point from which embodied emissions need to be reduced to zero is lower, and thus it will take a shorter time to reach the true zero.

This Special Issue is open to contributions from academics, researchers and practitioners who have engaged in achieving true zero of the combined embodied and operational emissions from buildings using bio-sourced materials and renewable energy technology, and are able to demonstrate a range of applications and lessons learned in this field.

This Special Issue will advance the agenda of net zero building design, combining embodied and operational emissions and demonstrating how true zero emissions can be achieved with certainty and by a specific year. This is a step forward from the existing literature where only operational emissions are considered as part of the net zero emissions design of buildings. The approach introduced by this Special Issue will advance the current state of the art regarding how net-zero buildings are designed and constructed.

Prof. Dr. Ljubomir Jankovic
Guest Editor

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.

• embodied emissions
• operational emissions
• true zero
• bio-sourced materials
• renewable energy