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The paper presents an energy simulation-based study to investigate the impacts of climate change on energy consumptions of an office building located in five different cities, United States. Annual energy consumption of a medium-size office building was predicted by building energy simulation software—EnergyPlus using TMY3 weather data and future climate data. In this study, we have used two sets of further climate data with different climate models including (1) Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3 (HadCM3), and (2) NCAR Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1) with the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5). A morphing method was applied to downscale the monthly weather forecast to hourly forecast for use in building energy simulation for the two General Circulation Models (GCMs): HadCM3 and CESM1. Using the generated future weather files, HVAC operation related mitigation measures including adjustment of thermostat setpoints, reduced HVAC operation hours, reduced VAV box minimum flow setting, and mixed-mode ventilation were simulated to compare with ASHRAE Standard 90.1 baseline simulated using TMY3 weather data. Simulation results on predicted whole building, heating and cooling energy consumptions were examined. The paper highlighted the importance of efficiently operating mechanical systems in buildings to ensure a more sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both new and existing buildings need to be adapted to climate change, in order to keep providing a comfortable and healthy indoor climate. Preferably, the adaptation measures applied at the building level scale do not require additional energy (i.e. passive measures). Previous studies showed that passive climate change adaptation measures can have a positive effect on thermal comfort in summer and its shoulder seasons in non-air-conditioned residential buildings. In this paper, the effect of these passive climate adaptation measures – applied at building component level – on the cooling and heating energy demand of a terraced house is analyzed using building energy simulations. It is shown that for this particular case the required cooling energy can be limited to a large extent (59–74%) when external solar shading or additional natural ventilation is applied. In addition, it is shown that for a well-insulated terraced house the energy cost for heating is not strongly affected by the application of passive climate change adaptation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of efficient design parameters in the initial stages of the life cycle of a building project helps to reduce the final energy demand. This article presents research results on the relation between the morphology of a building and its energy efficiency. Three types of residential buildings are analyzed: the single-family detached house, semidetached house and multidwelling building. The cases studied modeled in EnergyPlus to obtain building energy consumption per useful built surface. Also considered is the energy produced, thanks to the installation of photovoltaic solar panels on the building roof and on 50 % of the south façade surface. The paper provides a method to obtain the curve that shows the difference between the energy demand of residential buildings for various uses (HVAC, lighting, etc.) and the energy generated by installed solar panels in the building. The results reveal that the single-family detached housing model is the less energy-efficient. In the case of multidwelling houses, the optimal building height is obtained to reduce building energy consumption depending on total useful built area. The results show that up to 25 % of multidwelling building energy demand can be satisfied by solar energy on the rooftop and the façade. The balance between the energy demand and energy production of the building highlights the dimensional parameters that define optimal building shape from an energy efficiency perspective. The results obtained can be usefully applied to estimate the optimal geometric characteristics for a building of the same total surface area, which maximally reduces the final energy demand. [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]

• Building Bio-Climatic Charts are proposed for different climate change scenarios. • Time-varying significance of nine design parameters in this century are provided. • Effectiveness of airtightness will increase up to 329% by the end of this century. • Cooling potentials of natural ventilation will significantly decrease up to 69%. • A holistic passive design can reduce the building annual cooling load by 56.7%. The application of passive design strategies is crucial at the early architectural design stage for building energy use minimization. However, the time-varying effectiveness of passive design strategies in responding to future climate change in hot and humid climates are rather limited in the literature. This paper aims to examine the dynamic effectiveness of passive design strategies for residential buildings in Hong Kong under the context of future climate change. Using the newly developed hourly weather data and adaptive comfort standard model, the dynamic effectiveness of viable passive design strategies for residential buildings are evaluated over time in the 21st century by plotting Givoni building bio-climatic charts (BBCC) and simulation-based sensitivity analyses in a validated EnergyPlus model. Results show that solar protection strategies are still the highly sensitive strategies for building energy performance and the effectiveness of external windows' airtightness is expected to increase up to 329% by the end of this century, whereas the cooling potential of ventilation utilization will significantly decrease over time. When the different combination of sensitive passive design parameters is implemented onto the baseline residential building model for different climate scenarios, the annual and peak cooling load can be reduced up to 56.7% and 64.5%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The climate change is identified by the ground measurement of HK over the 37 years. • The building energy needs can be influenced by the climate change. • The TMY is suggested to be updated every 10 years or less for the climate change. • 10 to 12 years of the latest data can be proper for TMY in the changing climate. The weather data is essential to simulation-based building energy studies. The weather data should render the features of the changing climate. The typical meteorological year (TMY) developments using the long-term climate data, however, may weaken the impact of the recent climate change and the corresponding building energy responses. This paper studies the changes of the climate data (by ground measurements) and their impacts on the simulation results of the subtropical Hong Kong over 37 years. The climate changes for solar radiation, temperature and wind speed were summarised, and their daily total, average, extreme, and/or deviation values were presented. The typical weather data developed by the ground measurements of different times and period lengths (within the 37 years) determined the cooling load of a representative building in the Hong Kong, and the outcomes were compared to that of the yearly data. The period (length) of the raw measurements and the update frequency of TMY were optimized for the building energy simulations in the changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Future-TMY (F-TMY) and Morphing methodologies are compared in 14 Iberian cities. • Morphing sensitive analysis using 3 different files is performed. • High-quality Morphing and F-TMY have similar climate and BES performances (7%−8%). • F-TMY is representative of the multi-year simulation for BES applications. • Low-quality Morphing leads to average errors between 16% to 20%. In the last decade, building energy simulation (BES) became a central component in building energy systems' design and optimization. For each building location, BES requires one year of hourly weather data. Most buildings are designed to last 50+ years, consequently, the building design phase should include BES with future weather files considering climate change. This paper presents a comparative study of two methods to produce future climate hourly data files for BES: Morphing and typical meteorological year of future climate (F-TMY). The study uses data from a high-resolution (9 km) regional climate atmospheric model simulation of Iberia, spanning 10 years of historical and future hourly data. This study compares both methods by analyzing anomalies in air temperature, and the impact in BES predictions of annual and peak energy consumption for space heating, cooling and ventilation in 4 buildings. Additionally, this study performs a sensitivity analysis of morphing method. The analysis shows that F-TMY is representative of the multi-year simulation for BES applications. A high-quality Morphed TMY weather file has a similar performance compared to F-TMY (average difference: 8% versus 7%). Morphing based on different baseline climates, low-grid resolution and/or outdated climate projections leads to BES average differences of 16%-20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]