  Urban centers across the globe are responsible for a significant fraction of
energy consumption and CO2 emission. As urban centers continue to grow, the
popularity of glass as cladding material in urban buildings is an alarming
trend. Dynamic windows reduce heating and cooling loads in buildings by passive
heating in cold seasons and mitigating solar heat gain in hot seasons. In this
work, we develop a mesoscopic building energy model that demonstrates reduced
building energy consumption when thermochromic windows are employed. Savings
are realized across eight disparate climate zones of the United States. We use
the model to determine the ideal critical transition temperature of 20 to 27.5
{\deg}C for thermochromic windows based on metal halide perovskite materials.
Ideal transition temperatures are realized experimentally in composite metal
halide perovskite film composed of perovskite crystals and an adjacent
reservoir phase. The transition temperature is controlled by co-intercalating
methanol, instead of water, with methylammonium iodide and tailoring the
hydrogen-bonding chemistry of the reservoir phase. Thermochromic windows based
on metal halide perovskites represent a clear opportunity to mitigate the
effects of energy-hungry buildings.
