Thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) of educational buildings can affect students’ academic performance and well-being and are closely related to ventilation energy consumption. Demands of the indoor environmental quality within the classroom generally vary with the education levels and result in ventilation energy consumption accounting for a considerable proportion of the total energy use in bulk educational buildings. Its huge energy-saving potential is attracting worldwide attention from scholars and governments. Therefore, appropriate operation strategies of ventilation systems should be adopted to effectively reduce energy consumption without sacrificing thermal comfort and IAQ. However, the absence of relevant standards and guidelines for designing a quality classroom environment considering the special features of educational buildings remains an important research question. This study conducts a comprehensive review to determine research gaps and identify future directions for the interaction between thermal comfort, IAQ and ventilation energy consumption for educational buildings. The review results show that: (1) The thermal comfort prediction model should consider the influences of genders, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds; (2) The mixed-mode ventilation coupling the natural and mechanical approaches is preferred given its advantage of lower energy consumption and improved thermal comfort, but its control strategies need further exploration; (3) Optimizing passive design parameters of buildings (e.g., window to wall ratios, window orientations and sun shading installations) can significantly reduce the ventilation demands while maintaining indoor thermal comfort; (4) More studies are required for investigating thermal comfort in educational buildings during the heating period; and (5) IAQ of university buildings clearly requires further studies, especially on bacterial and fungal aerosol pollutants, for a more comprehensive assessment of the built environment.

This study develops a model for buildings with a cooling roof, walls, and low-emissivity (Low-E) windows. This model is verified through experimental analysis. The cooling demands of standard buildings and cooling buildings are compared, and the energy-saving potentials of cooling buildings are analysed. It is found that compared to standard buildings, cooling buildings exhibit superior cooling performances attributable to the application of cooling materials. Considering Hong Kong’s weather data, the indoor temperature of cooling buildings can be sub-ambient. The cooling demands of cooling buildings are decreased from 75 W/m² to 30 W/m², indicating a 60% energy-saving potential. The nationwide cooling demand for a standard building across China is approximately 95.7 W/m², whereas the nationwide summer average cooling demand for cooling buildings is 52.7 W/m². Moreover, the cooling performance of a cooling roof is adversely affected by hot and humid weather conditions, resulting in lower temperature drops in southern regions compared to northern regions. However, the nationwide temperature drop across China can still be 1.6 °C, demonstrating promising cooling potentials. For the Low-E windows, the temperature can also be sub-ambient, with a nationwide average temperature drop of 1.7 °C. Therefore, the use of Low-E windows across China can also significantly contribute to energy savings for indoor cooling. Overall, the results of this study show that cooling buildings have high energy-saving potential under various climates. The proposed model can provide a reliable tool to facilitate relevant cooling evaluation by stakeholders, thereby benefiting the popularization of this technology.