Search

Climate change may seriously affect the energy consumption of buildings by influencing their air conditioning loads, especially the ventilation loads which vary directly with the local weather conditions. Research on how the ventilation load responds to climate change is of great significance, especially in coastline subtropical regions like Hong Kong. This paper investigated the impacts of climate change on buildings' ventilation load and building energy use in Hong Kong with the hourly meteorological data from 1950 to 2007. Results have been well validated by the simulation of a typical local hotel building during this period. The results show that climate warming increases both sensible and latent parts of the cooling ventilation load. The latent part, which occupies ∼80% of the total ventilation load, increases at a higher rate, about twice of that of the sensible one. Furthermore, it is found that the urban heat island (UHI) effect causes a much higher growth rate of the ventilation load at night, which is about three times compared with that in the daytime. The latent part of the cooling ventilation load at night, which is found to be the most sensitive component to the climate change, plays a most significant role in the energy consumption increase. The possible measures were thus suggested to avoid negative changes of the ventilation load. Besides, reducing the UHI effect by better urban planning also significantly benefits the local buildings with a long air-conditioning operation time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the energy performance of existing building refurbishment has been identified as one of the key measures to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and combat climate change. However, little has been done to uncover how human behaviours would affect the selection of refurbishment solutions selection. The problem is particularly obvious for high-rise residential buildings as they are owned and/or occupied by different peoples with idiosyncratic behaviour and preference. In this research, 46 potential methods commonly used for major sustainable building refurbishment in high-rise residential buildings located in cities with sub-tropical climate like Hong Kong were identified through literature review. These sustainable building refurbishment methods are classified under five groups namely energy user pattern, domestic, high-rise building, climate feature and other building characteristics. A questionnaire survey was conducted to examine the feasibility of the identified refurbishment methods based on the perception of owners and occupants. The results show that those methods classified under building services category such as lighting, appliance, ventilation and lift received greater support from owners and occupants. It is interesting to note that owners and occupants did not favour those sustainable refurbishment options which are related to the building envelop when it comes to major building refurbishment. As for the renewable energy refurbishment methods, their acceptability was moderate indicating that there is huge potential for being incorporated into the major building refurbishment. This paper should help improve our understanding on what factors contribute to the satisfaction of owners and occupants of high-rise residential building in a major sustainable refurbishment scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The concern on climate change leads to growing demand for minimization of energy use. As building is one of the largest energy consuming sectors, it is essential to study the impact of climate change on building energy performance. In this regard, building energy simulation software is a useful tool. A set of appropriate typical weather files is one of the key factors towards successful building energy simulation. This paper reports the work of developing a set of weather data files for subtropical Hong Kong, taking into the effect of future climate change. Projected monthly mean climate changes from a selected General Circulation Model for three future periods under two emission scenarios were integrated into an existing typical meteorological year weather file by a morphing method. Through this work, six sets of future weather files for subtropical Hong Kong were produced. A typical office building and a residential flat were modeled using building simulation program EnergyPlus. Hourly building energy simulations were carried out. The simulated results indicate that there will be substantial increase in A/C energy consumption under the impact of future climate change, ranging from 2.6% to 14.3% and from 3.7% to 24% for office building and residential flat, respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]