Over the past few years, the use of passive cooling and heating technologies has become more common for reducing the energy consumption of buildings. However, these technologies are not often used for development cooperation building systems. In 2010, over 42.3 million people were forced to abandon their homes and live in temporary shelters. Buildings intended for children or the elderly are often climatized to improve the indoor thermal conditions. In this paper, a cost reduction in climatization for this type of building based on passive systems is proposed and studied. Building site optimization is performed to improve thermal behavior. To achieve this, computational fluid dynamics tools have been used. The integration of these passive systems allows the peak power demand to be reduced by up to 50% and the yearly energy consumption to be reduced by approximately 40%. These reductions are studied for conventional and renewable energy systems, showing that passive systems provide better thermal comfort and reduce initial investment and energy consumption, making low-cost buildings feasible. Passive systems should be a fundamental focus of study in development cooperation buildings. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.