In the early 21st century, energy consumption levels were specified by sector and the results interestingly indicated that buildings play an important role on global energy consumption. Buildings have a long life span lasting for 50 years or more and thus, minimization of energy consumption levels of buildings has a notable potential to contribute in mitigating greenhouse gas concentrations for longer periods. Most of the energy losses in buildings occur in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Therefore, recovering the waste heat from HVAC systems may considerably contribute to efficient energy utilization and hence, in degrading gas emissions. In this paper, a comprehensive review on building applications of heat recovery systems is presented. The review is given as a clear and understandable summary of the previous works. The review covers detailed description of heat recovery systems with working principle and system components, current typical heat recovery technologies including the building applications. Moreover, environmental impacts of heat recovery systems are evaluated. Future scenarios for heat recovery technologies including some recommendations are also considered in the study. It is concluded from the results that the heat recovery systems are very promising to mitigate the fuel consumption amounts of buildings. Heat recovery system (HRS) provides cost-effective and environmentally friendly energy. Thus, they can remarkably contribute in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.