A review of passive building research: energy performance influencing factors, research trends and future directions

The building sector accounts for one-third of the global energy consumption, making it a critical focus for energy efficiency initiatives. To reduce building energy consumption, various technologies have been developed and implemented, and among them, passive building technology has been viewed as effective. However, the development and application of passive building technology faces challenges due to different climate zones, different geographical locations and different social-cultural- technological contexts. Systematically reviewing existing research and analyzing its adaptability and challenges under varying climatic conditions, locations and contexts is important for advancing passive building technology. This study provides a comprehensive review of research progress, over the last 28 years, on passive building technology and energy consumption using a bibliometric analysis method. Drawing on the 409 publications sourced from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, CiteSpace tool was employed to analyze the annual publication, research themes, contents, trends and trajectory. The analysis also focuses on identifying key factors influencing energy performance in passive buildings. The results show that annual publications have been increasing exponentially, with authors came from a few countries such as China, UK, Germany, US, together with several European countries. The results also show that the existing research has covered a wide range of topics, including passive building characteristics, material and technological advancement, environmental impact, application of digital technology and data-driven methods. The results also show that building physics and orientations, extreme weather and occupant behavior significantly impact energy-saving performance of passive buildings. Future research may focus on adaptive technological strategies tailored to diverse climate zones, investigations into the interplay between indoor air quality, thermal comfort, acoustic environment, natural lighting and energy efficiency and balancing building energy efficiency and safety. It is suggested that data-driven analytical methods, multi-objective optimization methods and multi-disciplinary mixed-methods research design be applied in future research.