Today, buildings still account for almost half of the global energy consumption and carbon emission. This highlights the necessity to increase energy efficiency requirements worldwide in a common effort to reduce the construction sector's impacts on the environment. The current energy policies are driving toward a design that relies on airtight and highly insulated envelopes. As a consequence, energy efficient houses are found to have insufficient indoor air change rates, impacting on the indoor air quality and resulting in higher latent loads.

Improving the energy efficiency of the residential building stock has increasingly been promoted by policy makers as a means of reducing energy demand in the residential sector. We review the literature on some non-energy impacts of energy efficiency retrofitting measures aimed at increasing the air tightness and thermal insulation of residential properties. Specifically, we review the impact of retrofitting measures on indoor pollutants, mould growth, attenuation of radio signal and overheating.

Naturally ventilated buildings have been worldwide increasingly welcomed, given the current global awareness toward environmental sustainability, indoor health-quality and renewable energy. As Natural Ventilation (NV) performance relies on building design and interaction with the local environment, its potential benefits are not always easy to take advantage of, and thus sets up a vital field of study. This paper provides an overview of investigations on the subject by collecting researches focused on thermal comfort, energy efficiency and indoor air quality.