This series aims to broadly cover all the aspects related to environmental assessment of products, development of environmental and ecological indicators and eco-design of various products and processes. Below are the areas fall under the aims and scope of this series, but not limited to: Environmental Life Cycle Assessment; Social Life Cycle Assessment; Organizational and Product Carbon Footprints; Ecological, Energy and Water Footprints; Life cycle costing; Environmental and sustainable indicators; Environmental impact assessment methods and tools; Eco-design (sustainable design) aspects and tools; Biodegradation studies; Recycling; Solid waste management; Environmental and social audits; Green Purchasing and tools; Product environmental footprints; Environmental management standards and regulations; Eco-labels; Green Claims and green washing; Assessment of sustainability aspects.

In the context of sustainability and in the face of ambitious goals towards the reduction of CO2 emission, the modification of transparency in architecture becomes an important tool of energy flow management into the building. Windows that dim to stop the energy transfer reduce the cooling load in the building. Recently, however, the latest achievements in the development of electrochromic materials allowed us to integrate some additional—previously unknown—functionalities into EC devices. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of recent technological innovations in the field of smart windows and present the possibilities of recently established functionalities. This review article outlines recent general progress in electrochromic but concentrates on multicolour and neutral black electrochromism, spectrally selective systems, electrochromic energy storage windows, hybrid EC/TC systems, OLED lighting integrated with the EC device, and EC devices powered by solar cells. The review was based on the most recent publication from the years 2015–2020 recorded in the databases WoS and Scopus.

The present study investigates the issue of computer-aided daylight evaluation in an office room with a light shelf and dropped translucent ceiling. In this type of room, daylight is admitted from two sources: (i) a standard window in the wall and (ii) via a light shelf and clerestory window, which illuminate the plenum located above the working space. The light from the plenum is transmitted through the translucent ceiling into the office room. The present study is based on data obtained through a computer-aided daylight simulation by DeLuminæ (DL-Light, ver. 11.0.9, and DL-Instant, ver. 6.1.4) software using the Radiance engine and real weather data for Wroclaw, Poland, at 51st lat. N. An office room of 12 × 6 m with different shading and daylight distribution scenarios was simulated (Variants 1–5). Next, the useful daylight illuminance (UDI (%)) for the range of 300–3000 lx and daylight glare probability (DGP) were calculated. To further optimize the daylighting scenarios, an adaptive shading system was simulated, which was activated when the illuminance value dropped below 300 lx. In the final variant, Variant 6, mean UDI300–3000 values were recorded to be above 80% for 95% of the area of the work plane. This allows the conclusion that a light shelf and translucent ceiling guide daylight deep into the room, improving uniformity and reducing glare when the standard window is covered by an adaptive shading system.