Education Buildings: a Net Zero Transition Conducive to Health and Cognitive Performance

Education buildings are complex, dynamic, socio-technical systems seeking to provide solutions to a multitude of ill-defined and conflicting issues including the basic truth that the built environment is fundamental to the occupants’ productivity and sense of well-being and it is the totality of this idea that we need to understand and appreciate.

The past attempts to reduce carbon emissions from existing school buildings and current ongoing efforts to deliver energy-efficient school buildings conducive to learning have had little success. A decade ago, I thought that the reasons for this “underperformance” include a poor understanding of (a) how to design, engineer, and facilitate learning spaces for changing pedagogical practices to support a mass education system, and greater student diversity, (b) how pupils and teachers use energy in school buildings, (c) how pupils and teachers interact with new technology, (d) how they respond to socio-technical energy conservation initiatives, and (e) how the overall indoor environment quality affects the learning performance of pupils and productivity of teachers.

This special issue provides insights into the progress that we have made recently focusing on energy, health and cognitive performance. It starts with two think pieces: one advocating a paradigm shift in evidence-based policy making embracing climate change and cognitive performance in transition of Education buildings to net zero, and the other one offering opportunities to design the robust methods for evaluating the impacts of indoor environmental quality on cognitive performance of students. The articles from Portugal, Italy, China, the Netherlands and the UK provide useful insights on decarbonisation, climate change, cognitive performance and the impact of filtration on children’s health in nurseries.

I hope you find this special issue useful. Enjoy.