This paper aims to address the characteristics of urban microclimates that affect the building energy performance and implementation of the renewable energy technologies. An experimental campaign was designed to investigate the microclimate parameters including air and surface temperature, direct and diffuse solar irradiation levels on both horizontal and vertical surfaces, wind speed and direction in a dense urban area in London. The outcomes of this research reveal that the climatic parameters are significantly influenced by the attributes of urban textures, which highlight the need for both providing the microclimatic information and using them in buildings design stages. This research provides a valuable set of microclimatic information for a dense urban area in London. According to the outcomes of this research, the feasibility study for implementation of renewable energy technologies and the thermal/energy performance assessment of buildings need to be conducted using the microclimatic information rather than the meteorological weather data mostly collected from non-urban environments. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).