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In a changing outdoor climate, new buildings as well as the existing building stock need to adapt in order to keep providing their inhabitants and users a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, with a minimum or - preferably - no increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the effectiveness of six passive climate change adaptation measures applied at the level of building components is assessed using building energy simulations for three generic residential buildings as commonly built in - among others - the Netherlands: (1) detached house; (2) terraced house; (3) apartment. The study involves both residential buildings that are built according to the regulations and common practice in 2012, and residential buildings that were constructed in the 1970s, with a lower thermal resistance of the opaque and transparent parts of the building envelope. The climate change adaptation measures investigated are: (i) increased thermal resistance; (ii) changed thermal capacity; (iii) increased short-wave reflectivity (albedo); (iv) vegetation roofs; (v) solar shading; and (vi) additional natural ventilation. This paper quantifies the effectiveness of these climate change adaptation measures for new residential buildings as well as for renovation of the current building stock. The performance indicator is the number of overheating hours during a year. It is shown that exterior solar shading and additional natural ventilation are most effective for this performance indicator. Furthermore, increasing thermal insulation to reduce energy use for heating demands additional measures to prevent overheating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioclimatic potential analysis is one of the starting points for bioclimatic building design. However, as climate changes are being brought into the spotlight, bioclimatic potential is being put into question as well, because traditionally used passive strategies at a specific location may no longer represent properly balanced approach. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to systematically evaluate bioclimatic potential of the selected five locations. At these locations, bioclimatic potential was observed separately for each of the last five decades. In the second part, present and future energy performance of one bioclimatic and one non-bioclimatic real residential building was simulated. The results show that yearly balance between heating and cooling passive strategies changed through time in all the locations. For example, the use of overheating prevention strategies is becoming more significant than it used to be in the past. Specifically, the period of year when shading is needed to achieve thermal comfort increased by 2–7% points, depending on location. Energy performance analysis of the selected buildings showed that by 2050 both analysed buildings will become cooling dominated and that by 2050 the current design solutions in bioclimatic buildings will become irrelevant or at least extremely inefficient. In general, in temperate climate zone the prevailing bioclimatic strategies integrated in architecture focus on heating season. Therefore, bioclimatic strategies in a particular location must be re-evaluated in order to design new and retrofit existing energy efficient contemporary buildings with comfortable indoor thermal conditions. [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]

• 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]