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.

Background: The transformation of the global energy sector from fossil-based fuels to low/non-carbon fuels will reduce environmental pollutant load, which in turn will benefit human health. However, with upscaling of emerging renewable technologies and energy sources, it is important to identify the potential for unintended health impacts, and to understand where the knowledge gaps lie with respect to health. We aimed to identify these gaps by conducting a scoping review. Methods: We conducted a systematic search of Medline, Web of Science, PubMed and EMBASE.

People spend most of their time inside buildings, and buildings are responsible for approximately one third of total direct and indirect energy-related worldwide carbon emissions. Likewise, buildings in the U.S. account for about 40% of total U.S. energy consumption. Future building development will be driven not only by emerging challenges such as vulnerability to a changing climate and resource scarcity, but also by disruptive innovations and societal changes.

The built environment accounts for approximately forty percent of the total energy consumption in developed countries. Because buildings have a long life, the greatest opportunity for energy reduction in the built environment will come from energy conservation in the existing building stock. An overview of the policy challenges presented by the built environment, with an emphasis on existing facilities, is accompanied by a discussion of specific technologies that may have the potential to reduce energy use.