ABSTRACT
Buildings consume a significant amount of primary energy used around the world, which makes them one of the most greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors. In the past couple of years, several studies investigated ways of energy demand reduction in the built environment, for example, energy efficiency, improved glazing, improved insulation, energy management, and better building services. The effectiveness of these technologies depends on one crucial factor, the quality of the building envelope. Without designing an efficient envelope, it is not possible to improve the performance of buildings and achieve reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. One of the methods to achieve it is by introducing energy storage in the design of the building envelope. The objective of this review paper is to provide comparative assessment of various energy storage technologies and current practices associated with the building envelopes design. The proposed research further investigates the impact of several technologies integrated through the envelopes on the building energy performance. Energy storage in the design of the building envelope can significantly impact the heating/cooling demand, and the paper investigates the use of energy storage of particular phase change materials (PCMs). It has been found that energy storage integrated with the building envelope design has significant potential to be used as free heating/cooling of the buildings.
