Climate change impacts on heating and cooling energy demand in residential building units. Application in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract

The present study aims to evaluate the effect of climate change on the heating and cooling energy needs of a residential building unit, located in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. Future weather files have been generated using both statistical and dynamical downscaling methods. In the first case, the Meteonorm weather generator was used to generate a future weather file, while for the dynamic downscaling approach, the Hadley Regional Model 3 (HRM3), coupled with Hadley Climate Model 3 was employed. The generated future weather datasets have been then used as an input parameter in the dynamic energy performance simulations of the residential building unit with Energy Plus. For all examined weather datasets, the simulation results show a decrease of the heating energy use, an effect that is strongly counterbalanced by the rise of the cooling energy demand.