A Review on Harnessing Renewable Energy Synergies for Achieving Urban Net-Zero Energy Buildings: Technologies, Performance Evaluation, Policies, Challenges, and Future Direction

Yoorae Noh (), Shahryar Jafarinejad and Prashant Anand
Additional contact information
Yoorae Noh: School of Packaging, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Shahryar Jafarinejad: Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088, USA
Prashant Anand: Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-22

Abstract: As urbanization continues to accelerate globally, energy demand in cities is reaching unprecedented levels, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. In response, the concept of net-zero energy building (NZEB) is becoming a sustainable solution for urban energy needs. NZEB aims to achieve a net-zero energy footprint by balancing the energy it consumes with the energy it produces, primarily from renewable energy (RE) sources. This comprehensive literature review-based study explores the role of RE synergies in the context of urban NZEBs, including discussions on definition and development of NZEBs, RE-synergies for achieving NZEBs, sustainable trends and clusters of NZEBs, climate change impacts on NZEBs, their performance evaluation, policy and regulatory frameworks, and challenges and possible solutions related to NZEBs. It has been identified that while customizing NZEB definitions to align with regional energy supply and demand is important, the same is highly dependent on building architectural and micro-climate features. The assessment of climate change effects and NZEB practices should involve evaluating building energy equilibrium, occupant comfort, and interactions with the energy grid. There are still some technical, policy, and socio-economic challenges that need more attention to provide comprehensive solutions for further enhancing the sustainable development/performance of NZEBs and achieving their goal.

Keywords: climate change; net-zero energy building; renewable energy; sustainability; performance; cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/8/3444/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/8/3444/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:8:p:3444-:d:1379274

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().