The purpose of this paper is to provide a source of information on thermal energy use in buildings, its drivers, and their past, present and future trends on a global and regional basis. Energy use in buildings forms a large part of global and regional energy demand. The importance of heating...

Energy use in buildings accounts for 38% of global total final energy consumption, 45% of which in OECD countries. According to the International Energy Agency the continuing demand for new large and small appliances, often with new functionality, is resulting in rapidly increasing electricity...

The energy demand by the private sector for buildings HVAC systems has increased significantly, driving the scientific community to find different alternatives to reduce this high energy demand. Phase change materials (PCMs) are presented as materials with high thermal energy storage (TES)...

This paper presents a review of the literature on low carbon and low embodied energy materials in buildings. Embodied energy is defined and discussed vs. operating energy of buildings and its growing importance due to the implementation of the Energy Building Performance Directive (EBPD) in...

The use of thermal energy storage (TES) systems for solar heating and cooling applications has received considerable attention in recent decades because it has a high potential in energy savings. Phase change materials (PCMs) can store large amount of energy per mass unit compared with other TES...

Microencapsulated phase change materials (MPCM) are well known in advanced technologies for the utilization in active and passive systems, which have the capacity to absorb and slowly release the latent heat involved in a phase change process. Microcapsules consist of little containers, which...

The use of thermal energy storage by phase change materials (PCM) is increasing in interest for building applications. For the deployment of the technology, appropriate characterization of PCM and hybrid PCM is essential, but it is not always possible to carry it out with conventional equipment,...

The present work compares the environmental impact of three different thermal energy storage (TES) systems for solar power plants. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for these systems is developed: sensible heat storage both in solid (high temperature concrete) and liquid (molten salts) thermal...

The use of double skin facades (DSF) in the building sector and its thermal benefits have been widely studied numerically over the last 30 years. These modelling and simulations are based on different typologies, which have evolved altogether with the available computational resources. The...

An evaluation of the environmental impact of construction systems that are composed of facades based on alveolar bricks and macroencapsulated phase change materials done using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is presented. Their energy consumption rates for both heating and cooling have been measured...