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The goal of the research described in this paper is to address climate change by promoting the production of renewable energy in building envelopes, which are exposed to solar radiation. It proposes an energy-based design paradigm, where energy processes shape the building form, and a digital design system for building envelopes that considers the trajectory of sunrays. The goal is to create envelopes that are efficient in harvesting solar energy, enabling them to produce the electricity that buildings consume. To operationalize the proposed digital design system, a building envelope grammar is developed and implemented in a software called LIDIA to be used by architects in design process to generate solutions with improved energy production performance. The efficiency of the resulting solutions, the effectiveness of LIDIA and, therefore, the validity of the proposed paradigm, is demonstrated with the design of envelope solutions for single family houses