Buildings account for a significant share of global energy consumption, with a major portion attributed to cooling systems. Despite extensive research on passive cooling strategies, most existing studies focus on individual techniques or specific climatic contexts, and comprehensive comparative assessments across multiple climates remain limited. This study presents a climate-based comparative review of passive cooling strategies across five climatic zones: hot and dry, hot and humid, temperate and humid, temperate and semi-arid, and cold climates. A total of 124 studies, selected through a structured multi-stage screening process from major scientific databases, were systematically analyzed. Due to variations in building typologies, performance indicators, and analytical methods, a semi-quantitative synthesis approach was adopted based on reported performance metrics such as cooling load reduction, indoor temperature reduction, and thermal comfort improvement. The results show that the effectiveness of passive cooling strategies is strongly climate-dependent. While some strategies, such as shading devices and thermal insulation, demonstrate consistent performance across multiple climates, others, including phase change materials and evaporative cooling systems, exhibit more context-dependent behavior. Based on these findings, a climate-oriented decision-support framework is proposed to guide the selection of appropriate passive cooling strategies under different climatic conditions. Compared with previous reviews, this study provides an integrated comparative perspective across multiple strategies and climates, supporting more informed and climate-responsive building design decisions.
Niknami et al. (2026) studied this question.