Resilience of a Building to Future Climate Conditions in Three European Cities

Abstract

Building energy need simulations are usually performed using input files that contain information about the averaged weather data based on historical patterns. Therefore, the simulations performed are not able to provide information about possible future scenarios due to climate change. In this work, future trends of building energy demands due to the climate change across Europe were studied by comparing three time steps (present, 2050, and -2080) in three different European cities, characterized by different Köppen-Geiger climatic classes. A residential building with modern architectural features was taken into consideration for the simulations. Future climate conditions were reached by applying the effects of climate changes to current hourly meteorological data though the climate change tool world weather file generator (CCWorldWeatherGen) tool, according to the guidelines established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In order to examine the resilience of the building, the simulations carried out were compared with respect to: peak power, median values of the power, and energy consumed by heating and cooling system. The observed trend shows a general reduction in the energy needs for heating (–46% for Aberdeen, –80% for Palermo, –36% for Prague in 2080 compared to the present) and increase (occurrence for Aberdeen) in cooling requirements. These results imply a revaluation of system size.

Impact of Global Warming in Subtropical Climate Buildings: Future Trends and Mitigation Strategies

“…This variation in the climate pattern was similar in other investigations located in the Mediterranean area: the average temperatures in Rome, Valencia and Seville are expected to increase by 4.9 • C, 5.17 • C and 4.1 • C, respectively, in the time period of 2050-2100 [32,41,43].…”

“…However, cooling consumption is projected to decrease in a percentage of 0-1% (20.4-30.1 kWh/m 2 ). So, again, an insignificant increase in primary energy consumption is predicted in the interval of 0-1% (100-117.2 kWh/m 2 ) and in CO 2 emissions of 1% (32,,508 kgCO 2 /m 2 ) (Figure 9, Table A3).…”

“…Jiang et al [31] and Ciancio et al [32] used these software packages to evaluate the future climate data of a few cities, concluding that winters in 2050 will have milder temperatures. Such conditions will be advantageous in terms of energy for northern regions where there will be considerable savings for heating consumption.…”

Assessment of the Impact of Occupants’ Behavior and Climate Change on Heating and Cooling Energy Needs of Buildings

“…Authors estimated for 2070 an average decrease of 18-33% and an average increase of 15-126% for the heating and cooling energy use, respectively. Ciancio et al [28] simulated the energy performances of a building in three cities (Aberdeen, Palermo, and Prague) considering three climatic scenarios (2020, 2050, and 2080). In general, decreasing trends for heating energy needs and increasing trends for cooling energy needs were obtained.…”

“…In this study, the climate change world weather file generator (CCWorldWeatherGen) [37] was used to create the weather files of future climate scenarios. Several studies used this tool to obtain future weather files [6,25,[27][28][29][30], and the authors in [38] presented a critical analysis of it. Specifically, CCWorldWeatherGen is a Microsoft Excel-based tool commonly used that, employing the morphing procedure [39], provides weather files for future scenarios using outputs from the UK Hadley Centre Coupled Model (version 3, HadCM3) [40].…”