Impact of climate change heating and cooling energy use in buildings in the United States (original) (raw)
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Impacts of climate change on building heating and cooling energy patterns in California
Energy, 2012
Global climate change is making California's mild Mediterranean climate significantly warmer, and a substantial impact on building energy usage is anticipated. Studies on building cooling and energy demand have been inaccurate and insufficient regarding the impacts of climate change on the peak load pattern shifts of different kinds of buildings. This study utilized archived General Circulation Model (GCM) projections and statistically downscaled these data to the site scale for use in building cooling and heating simulations. Building energy usage was projected out to the years of 2040, 2070, and 2100. This study found that under the condition that the cooling technology stays at the same level in the future, electricity use for cooling will increase by 50% over the next 100 years in certain areas of California under the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)'s worst-case carbon emission scenario, A1F1. Under the IPCC's most likely carbon emission scenario (A2), cooling electricity usage will increase by about 25%. Certain types of buildings will be more sensitive to climate change than others. The aggregated energy consumption of all buildings including both heating and cooling will only increase slightly.
European Journal of Sustainable Development, 2021
The growth of urban population as the result of economic and industrial development has changed our place of living from a prosperous place to where the resources are carelessly consumed. On the other hand, long-term climate change, i.e. global warming, has had adverse impact on our resources. Certain resources are on the verge of depletion as the consequence of climate change and inconsiderate consumption of resources, unless serious measures are implemented immediately. The building sector, whose share in the municipal energy consumption is considerably high, is a key player that may successfully solve the problem. This paper aims to study the effects of climate change on the energy consumption of buildings and analyze its magnitude to increase the awareness of how construction can reduce the overall global energy consumption. A descriptive-analytical method has been applied to analyze valid models of energy consumption according to different scenarios and to interpret the conditi...
Assessing the impact of climate change on building heating and cooling energy demand in Canada
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021
In recent years, the building sector has received increasing attention with attempts to limit its energy consumptions and GHG emissions. In fact, buildings account for more than 30% of the overall energy demand worldwide, with projections for increases in this quota due to climate changes, urbanization, and higher living comfort standards. This study investigates the effects of climate changes on the heating and cooling energy demand of buildings in the most populated urban region in Canada, i.e. the city of Toronto in Ontario. Statistical and dynamical downscaling methods are utilized to generate several future weather files, starting from different baseline climates including the old Canadian Weather Year for Energy Calculation CWEC (representing the 1959–1989 period) and the new CWEC 2016 (representing the 1998–2014 period). In dynamical downscaling, a regional climate model is used to obtain a finer resolution than traditional general circulation models. The generated future weather data sets are then used for simulating the energy demand of 16 building prototypes. The simulation results show an average decrease of 18%–33% for the heating energy use intensity, and an average increase of 15%–126% for the cooling energy use intensity by 2070, depending on the baseline climatic file of use and building typology. The forecasted GHG emissions of each building prototype are then discussed. The results demonstrate the need to perform building modelling with sensitivity analysis of future climate scenarios in order to design more resilient buildings
Energy and Buildings, 2023
Climate change has a broad impact on different aspects of energy use in buildings. This study explores potential changes in future heating and cooling energy demands. Increasing comfort expectations resulting from events like the extraordinary summer heatwaves in Europe are accelerating this trend to develop future scenarios for a better understanding of the relationship between future climate changes and the cooling need. This study used future weather data to estimate the heating and cooling energy demands in the Belgian building stock by 2050 and 2100 under base and business-as-usual scenarios using a dynamic building simulation model. The study showed that heating energy demand in the base scenario is expected to decrease by 8% to 13% in the 2050s and 13% to 22% in the 2090s compared to the 2010s. Additionally, the cooling energy demand is expected to increase by 39% to 65% in the 2050s and by 61% to 123% in the 2090s compared to the 2010s. Retrofit strategies applied to different building types contribute to lower the increase in cooling energy demand in the business-as-usual scenario compared to the base scenario. The cooling energy demand for an average building in the business-as-usual scenario is expected to increase with a range of 25% to 71% in the 2050s compared to 45% to 92% in the base scenario and 77% to 154% in the 2090s compared to 72% to 198% in the base scenario compared to the 2010s. The findings of the study provide insights to mitigate the impacts of climate change on heating and cooling energy demands.
MATEC Web of Conferences, 2019
Buildings now produce more than a third of global greenhouse gases, making them more than any other sector contributing to climate change. This paper investigates the effect of climate change on the energy performance and thermal comfort of a high-rise residential building with different energy characteristic levels, i.e. bylaw to meet current National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB), and passive house (PH) under two climate zones in British Columbia, Canada. SRES A2, RCP-4.5 and RCP-8.5 emission scenarios are used to generate future horizon weather data for 2020, 2050, and 2080. The simulation results show that for both bylaw and PH cases, the heating energy consumption would be reduced while cooling energy consumption would be increased. As a result, for the bylaw case, the total energy consumption would be decreased for two climate zones, while for PH case, the total energy consumption would be increased for zone 4 and decreased for zone 7. In addition, the number of h...
Climate Change Impacts on Building Energy Requirements
EasyChair, 2021
The population growth and the global warming would significantly affect the total building energy demand to maintain comfort conditions. Because of the global temperature rise, the heating load may decrease in some regions but considerably augment the cooling load. In addition, the energy required for cooling load is much higher than that of heating load. Thus, it is of quite importance to evaluate the future energy demand for built environment in order to put efforts in improving energy systems and efficiency, and to develop energy policies to mitigate and adapt climate change impacts. Present work consolidates the studies related to the climatic change impacts on built environment. The adopted methodology and predictions of building energy change are presented, critically analyzed and discussed in this work. Finally, the challenges related to the building energy requirement are presented.
Climate Change Impacts on Energy Demand of Madrid Buildings
Journal of Clean Energy Technologie
The future impacts of climate change on heating and cooling energy demand were investigate by building energy demand simulations by EnergyPlus model and hourly climate data for two IPCC scenarios: RCP 4.5 (stabilization emission scenario) and RCP 8.5 (little effort to reduce emissions). The climate scenarios have been downscaled from 1º to 50 meters of spatial resolution over city of Madrid. A Madrid typical 1km by 1km area of buildings is simulated using detailed meteorological information for each building produced by a dynamical downscaling process taking into account the 3D shape of the buildings, for years 2011 and 2100. Three types of buildings were identified: offices, hotels and apartments. The three prototypes are based on ASHRAE 90.1 Prototype Building Modeling Specifications but major characteristics have been adapted for each specific simulated building. We analyze the changes (%) in energy demand for the heating (gas) and electricity (HVAC system) for year 2100 versus 2011.The results show an increase in cooling demand around 10.5% by 2100 with RCP 8.5. The annual heating gas demand for office buildings will increase by 64.4% while the cooling energy demand will fall by 7.8% with the RCP 4.5 because future will be cooler that the present. The results show that climate change will have a large effect in the building energy demand and the used methodology can be used to design strategies to reduce the effects of climate change.
Energy and Buildings, 2014
Recent years have witnessed growing concern about climate change's impact upon office buildings' performance in regard to energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort. A vicious circle of raising outdoor temperatures and consequently increasing CO 2 emissions associated with raising energy demands for cooling during summer heat waves is anticipated in this respect. This paper builds upon regionally downscaled weather data from future climate scenarios and applies these to dynamic thermal simulation of nine sample office buildings in Vienna, Austria. Values of both heating and cooling demands under current and future conditions are calculated and compared: while heating demands slightly diminish, cooling requirements generally rise significantly. Distinct differences in energy performance of buildings from different periods of construction can be observed. Due to the buildings' respective constructions its overall energy demand raise, stagnate or even slightly decrease under conditions of climate change. Keywords Climate change, building simulation, office buildings, energy input for district heating and cooling system, cooling demand, heating demand Abbreviations COP Coefficient of Performance EER Energy Efficiency Ratio IPCC SRES Scenarios: A1 describes a future world of very rapid economic growth, global population that peaks in midcentury and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies. A2 describes a very heterogeneous world. The underlying theme is self-reliance and preservation of local identities. Fertility patterns across regions converge very slowly, which results in continuously increasing global population. Economic development is primarily regionally oriented. B1 describes a convergent world with the same global population as in the A1 storyline, but with rapid changes in economic structures toward a service and information economy, with reductions in material intensity, and the introduction of clean and resource-efficient technologies.
Applied Energy, 2014
Climate change has spatially heterogeneous impact on heating and cooling energy and fuel uses in building sector. Building energy and fuel uses are sensitive to other factors such as climate policy as well as climate change. The 50-state building model provides both insights at the regional level and potentially better national-level estimates. Climate change impact on building electricity use is critical, and needs to be incorporated in infrastructure planning.
Energy and Buildings, 2020
To better understand the impacts of the warming caused by global climate change on building performance, future hourly weather data that account for climate change are crucial to building simulation studies. Downscaling from general circulation models (GCMs) by the morphing method has been adopted by researchers worldwide. Using this method, we developed six sets of future hourly weather data for Hong Kong, taking the typical meteorological year (TMY) as the baseline climate. The ensemble mean from 24 general circulation models (GCMs) in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) has also been incorporated to take into account the uncertainties and biases between different models. These newly developed future weather data were then employed in the building energy simulation to evaluate the impacts of future climate change. Moreover, this study used the adaptive comfort standard (ACS) from ASHRAE Standard 55 in a mixed-mode residential building to consider the acclimatization effects of occupants in the changing climate. Results indicate that by the end of this century, the indoor discomfort percentage in the cooling seasons are expected to increase from 21.9% for TMY to 36.0% and 50.4% under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively, while the annual cooling load is expected to increase up to 278.80%.