Building envelopes toward energy-savings in hot and humid climates: a review

Abstract

Energy-efficient measures are being increasingly implemented in the building sector to reduce the increasing energy consumption with the growing population and the rapid development of urban building layouts. In hot and humid climates, energy-saving measures for the building envelope elements have attracted increasing interest in research and practice due to their effectiveness in upgrading the building energy performance by reducing the amount of heat gain and solar glare to the building’s indoor environments. Accordingly, as evidenced by our review of the literature, an increasing number of publications on energy-saving measures for the building envelope are being published in peer-reviewed articles. However, a few literature overviews covering all possible energy-saving measures of building envelope elements, which can provide insight into determining the value of their effective parameters to achieve the best performance and evaluate the feasibility of energy efficiency improvements. This paper attempts to fill that gap by reviewing recent advances in energy-saving measures for building envelope elements and comparing their various parameters to suggest the best design options. This study summarised that applying individual measures to a certain degree is straightforward energy-saving potential. Otherwise, high energy-saving levels must incorporate an optimum combination of many energy-saving measures and balance their conflicting influences on energy performance criteria. This study may be handy for stakeholders responsible for decision-making during the design of new or retrofitting existing buildings.