Recent advancements in green building technologies (GBTs) have grown substantially, as an outcome of the environmental, economic and societal benefits. It has the potential to move toward sustainable development, specifically related to climate change. In GBTs, the main objective is to use energy, water and other resources in a balanced way, without using them extensively. This will improve the environmental conditions. Green buildings (GBs) are beneficial when it comes to energy consumption and emissions; low maintenance and operation costs; boosting health and productivity; etc. There is a lack of a critical review of the past or present research work in the area of the Green Building Technology (GBT) sector to identify the future roadmap for sustainable green building technologies. A critical review, with the help of proper research methodology, was identified. The scope of this study is to analyze the existing work on different issues, and find different key issues in green building research, which has minimal use of natural resources, is cost-effective and is designed and constructed for a longer duration, considering future prospects. This paper examines the state of green building construction today and makes recommendations for further study and development which will be necessary for a sustainable future. In order to encourage research, this study also identified a few possible future research directions in sustainable development.

The scientific literature extensively mentions the use of a solar air heater (SAH) by utilizing solar energy for heating purposes. The poor heat-transfer rate of an SAH with a flat plate is caused by developing a laminar sub-layer near the heated base plate. The plate temperatures improve significantly, resulting in losses and a decrease in performance. The passive approach entails the placement of fins/turbulators/pouring material/ribs to the surface where the boundary layer forms to disrupt it. Artificially roughened SAH for gathering and efficiently using solar radiations for thermal purposes is extensively described in the literature. This paper includes a thorough literature overview of the history, basics, roughness evolution, forms of SAH, and recent breakthroughs in thermal performance improvement techniques for SAH compiled by several researchers. This paper uses a comparative evaluation of several roughness geometries and kinds of SAH to uncover thermohydraulic performance factors that may be considered in future research to pick the optimal configuration.

The growing demand for energy in the building sector drives the need for change from fossil fuels to environment-friendly power sources which can also mitigate the effect of global warming and climate change. One of the initiatives to knock down the peak load and energy demand in buildings is stepping toward energy-efficient buildings for a sustainable future. This paper aims to review the fundamental aspects for approaching net zero energy consumption buildings (nZECB) keeping into consideration the effect of building physics and challenges faced in the pathway and its feasibility. Also, it addresses various policies and plans that can dramatically change the future of developing nations like India toward a zero-emissions energy system. Considering all the facts, this study suggests inflating our focus beyond direct energy use and opt for hybridized clean energy sources and enhance the constructional parameters for a better, greener, and cleaner future.

The need for hot water in residential buildings requires a significant energy potential. Therefore, an efficient water heating system is important to achieve the goal of saving high-grade energy. The most simple and cheapest solar water heater is a flat plate solar collector (FPSC), which can increase the thermal energy of fluid by absorbing solar radiation. The performance of FPSC is comparatively low due to the dilute nature of solar insolation. Therefore, advancement of FPSC is being undertaken to improve the performance and achieve size reduction. In past, several techniques have been exploited to improve the performance of FPSC, which are presented in the present paper. These techniques include surface modifications, use of nanofluids, solar selective coating, and applications of a mini/macro channel, heat pipe, and vacuum around absorber. Surface modification on the absorber/absorber tube techniques are exploited to transfer the maximum possible solar energy to working fluids by increasing the heat transfer rate. Insertion of wire mesh, coil, and twisted tapes in the flow has great potential to increase the Nusselt number by 460% at the expense of a large pressure drop. Selective coating of Cu0.44 Ti0.44 Mn0.84 helps to absorb up to 97.4% of the incident solar energy, which is more significant. Many nanofluids have been exploited as heat transfer fluids, as they not only increase the performance but also reduce the fluid inventory. So, these techniques play a very prominent role in the performance of FPSC, which are discussed in detail. Summaries of the results are presented and recommendations proposed.

This review presents the existing state‐of‐the‐art practices of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in naturally ventilated school buildings and is mainly focused on the components of IEQ like thermal comfort, indoor air quality with ventilation, and visual and acoustic comfort. This article also discusses the impacts of COVID‐19 on naturally ventilated school buildings, highlighting the obviousness of dynamic applications that concentrate on reducing COVID‐19 effects in naturally ventilated school buildings. The importance of the concerned issues and factors are discussed in detail for future research direction. This review is a step toward the development of the IEQ standard for naturally ventilated school buildings.