Environmentally sustainable design concepts also include aspects related to the commercial and residential heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) industry. Among several considerations, one of the topics attended to is the issue of indoor air quality throughout the design and construction stages of a building's life.
One technique to reduce energy consumption while maintaining adequate air quality, is demand controlled ventilation. Instead of setting throughput at a fixed air replacement rate, carbon dioxide sensors are used to control the rate dynamically, based on the emissions of actual building occupants.
For the past several years, there have been many debates among indoor air quality specialists about the proper definition of indoor air quality and specifically what constitutes "acceptable" indoor air quality.