Topic: Challenges and Opportunities for Carbon Neutrality from Buildings Construction

Building sectors account for over 40% of total carbon emissions from the lifecycle analysis, with over 60% in operation and around 30% in construction. Energy-efficient design, cleaner power production and hybrid energy storages are essential for the transition towards zero-energy buildings and carbon-neutral district energy communities with high energy flexibility and eco-economic viability. However, the transition roadmap is full of great challenges, requiring combined efforts from multidisciplinary research, including advanced building materials, sustainable energy and environment, electrochemical storage, artificial intelligence, etc. Effective strategies for zero-energy buildings can resort mainly to passive building design (e.g., highly insulated materials on building façade, solar-reflective coatings on glazing, super-insulating aerogel glazing and daytime sky radiative cooling) and distributed renewable energy supply (e.g., solar PV, wind turbine and earth-to-air heat exchanger). However, due to the intermittent renewable energy and stochastic energy demand, their spatiotemporal mismatch requires grid interaction for the dynamic power balance but imposes great import/export pressure on the local microgrid. The hybrid energy storages and advanced energy management strategies are thereafter important for self-sufficiency and grid independence of building energy systems.

Accordingly, this Special Issue will focus on the transition towards zero-carbon buildings, including but not limited to the following:

● Life Cycle Carbon Emissions of Nearly Zero-energy Public Buildings;

● Carbon Emission Control Index of Low-, Nearly Zero-, Zero-Carbon Emissions from the Renovation of Existing Residential Areas;

● Method for Assessing Carbon Emissions based on Building Information Modeling;

● Method for Checking the Carbon Footprint of Public Buildings;

● Carbon Emission Measurement in Building Materialization Stage;

● Policy, Technology, and Evaluation Method of Low-Carbon Buildings and Communities;

● Green Building and Community Development;

● The Value of Electricity Emission Factor for Standardized Calculation of Building Carbon Emission;

● Optimization for Residential Buildings Using Alternative Materials and Designs;

● The Potential of Blockchain in Green Building Construction.

30 Aug 2024