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The purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of the key trends in the integration of photovoltaic (PV) facilities into the built environment in cities. This is regarded as part of a series of measures towards wider use of renewable energy sources.

The problem has been approached from the point that cities are consumers of large amounts of energy. They require uninterrupted energy supply but with dynamic power profile. Mainly consumption of energy generated from fossil fuels is present nowadays with significant pollution of the environment as a consequence. The sustainable energy transition in cities means increasing the supply of energy from renewable sources.

The paper points to the integration of PV renewable systems in the built environment, opportunities and constraints, design conditions and tools. The consideration of the constraints which creates urban environment is carried out to understand the complexity of selecting locations in the cities. The paper gives an overview of the possibilities of PV systems integration in the built environment and discusses physical limitations in the urban environment and simulation tools as well as challenges and research and development issues.

The paper offers a critical review of the PV applications which have been illustrated with examples from developed countries. However, examples from developing markets have not been considered. Future work would address this limitation and enable the discussion from a comparative perspective.

The study gives a comprehensive overview of PV integrations in contemporary cities, stimulating architects’ practitioners to acquire the PV technology and aesthetics, and to apply it in future developments.

Observing the use of PV applications from the perspective of architects and designers the discussion and examples covered in this paper offers an original review, which provides the base future in-depth studies on PV applications in various contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a scientific method to evaluate possible urban layouts of a test building integrating building regulations, natural light standard and energy requirements to achieve nearly zero-energy buildings in Estonia. The integration of building regulations, energy requirements and natural light standards is crucial to evaluate the incidence of the surrounding environment when analyzing the energy performance of buildings.

The paper investigates the variations of the energy consumption of a model building with different orientations and variable urban surroundings configurations for the latitude of Tallinn. The different urban configurations are due to combinations of the different building requirements of fire safety, daylighting and insolation hours that in Estonia affect the layout of residential districts, thus influencing significantly the potential consumption of buildings. Different layouts of surrounding buildings have been chosen all guaranteeing at different degrees the fulfillment of the building requirements for the test building and energy simulations have been run to find the urban layouts that guarantee best performances.

The outcomes show that the test building interior temperatures and energy performances vary significantly in the different urban planning configurations and for the different orientations, underlining that is strongly recommended to run always energy simulation of building considering their surrounding environment. The conclusions show the principles to integrate the building regulations to achieve nearly zero-energy districts that significantly can improve life quality in the urban environment.

The paper analyze the energy efficiency of buildings with different features and orientations simulating their possible urban environment layouts given by building regulations, and not isolated or as built in “an open field” like most of the existing literature in the field.