A significant amount of energy is consumed on cooling buildings in countries that experience hot/humid climates. The increasing demand for high-rise buildings, with their inherent air conditioning systems, adds extra requirements to electricity grids or local district cooling systems. Thus, this work is structured to identify the influencing factors of cooling energy demand in high-rise buildings that are geographically restricted to countries of these climates. The influence of the factor is quantified as its contribution to cooling energy savings when manipulated or optimized. It is found that the average annual cooling reductions are 12%, 24.7%, 18.3%, and 20% with ranges of 3%-27%, 2.6%-60%, 5.6%-30%, and 11%-29% for building typology, envelope, system, and operation factors, respectively. Environmental factors lack quantification in the literature, although they are considered, however their effect is not quantified. In general, most studies considered building typology and building envelope factors which are related to building design, while few studies considered building operation and building system factors. The aforementioned factors and their importance lead to suggestions of conducting more studies on building operational and building system factors as they significantly contribute in cooling energy savings. Since Urban Heat Island (UHI) can cause a change of a city's microclimate which may double the cooling demand, it is listed as one of the essential environmental factors. This review has shown various aspects that are vital in studying building cooling load demand and its related energy performance.

Energy consumption in buildings is considerably high in areas of hot and humid climates due to its association with high cooling loads. Electricity grids are highly affected by the consumption of cooling systems like air-conditioning and large refrigeration facilities, which significantly impact the economic and environmental sectors. As building design and operating parameters influence the cooling demand in the building, it is believed the root cause of the problem may be detected at an early building design stage. Thus, this review identifies the building design parameters that impact the cooling loads in buildings that are geographically restricted to countries with hot and humid climates. The building's design characteristics are classified into four main categories: glass characteristics, wall characteristics, building orientation and dimensions (BO & D), and building cooling system. The review was conducted over high-rise and low-rise buildings. Annual energy requirements (in some cases overlapping with electricity consumption), annual cooling loads, and peak cooling loads are the three forms in which energy demand reductions in buildings are represented. It is found that maximum annual cooling load savings are obtained through cooling systems, followed by wall characteristics, then glass characteristics, with the least for BO & D, with maximum reductions of up to 61%, 59%, 55%, and 21%, respectively. As for the peak cooling load reductions, wall characteristics, cooling systems, and glass characteristics had almost the same average values of 18.7%, 15.2%, and 17.2%, respectively, while BO & D are not reported due to the incomparable number of case studies. The parameters that have the most influence on reductions in peak cooling loads are wall and glass characteristics. In general, savings that are associated with wall characteristics are more significant for low-rise buildings than for high-rise buildings, while the latter is more influenced by glass characteristics. This is a reasonable conclusion since high-rise buildings, in general, acquire higher window-to-wall ratios than the former. In general, most studies considered glass characteristics, while fewer studies considered BO & D. This review has shown various aspects that are vital in studying building cooling load demand and its related energy performance.

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