Are high-rise residential buildings rising to future weather scenarios?

Abstract

Evaluating the energy and thermal performance of existing buildings during their lifetime brings about uncertainty, since there is strong evidence suggesting that climate change (CC) will affect indoor environment quality. CC has been reflected, among other phenomena, in a temperature rise that is necessarily related to the indoor temperature of buildings. Recognizing possible future climate scenarios and their possible effects will allow improving the resilience of existing buildings. Today’s buildings are sources of high energy demand. In the case of Chile, an ordinary house, due to its poor thermal performance, requires between 40% and 60% of its energy consumption for heating or cooling, depending on the location. On the other hand, a constructive phenomenon has been seen in Latin American cities over the last three decades, where city centres are densified with high-rise residential buildings. These are characterized by very small apartments, which affect indoor environment quality, solar gains, ventilation, etc. Thus, the proposal of this paper is to evaluate this residential typology. The aim of this research is to prospectively study the effects produced by CC on the energy-thermal performance of high-rise residential buildings, using an exploratory research, in three different thermal zones of Chile through to 2080. The analysis consists in comparing the performance of the same case built in three cities, using the Design Builder software for dynamic simulations. The results show a temperature increase that affects apartments in different ways. In the northernmost city, Iquique, the heating demand would disappear in 60 years; in Santiago, it will be reduced by half and in the south, while in Puerto Montt, it will represent only 62% of current demand; however, the cooling demand will increase in all cases. While hours within the comfort range will increase in the southernmost cities, in the northernmost and central cities, the risk of overheating will increase significantly This provides great challenges in terms of improving thermal comfort for the coming years, incorporating possible CC impacts into housing design to prevent negative results, such as overheating.