Enhancing building energy efficiency through a climate adaptive design: Considering upcoming extreme climate conditions

Abstract

Known as one of the significant sources of impacting building energy efficiency, climate change can drastically alter the long-term energy consumption patterns of buildings. It is widely acknowledged in the literature that designs based on conventional pathways relying solely on historical weather data disregard the effects of the changing climate and lose their intended energy performance over time. Several endeavors have been made to generate weather files capable of capturing the essence of the changing climate and carrying its variability. In line with these efforts, the synthesized weather files have emerged as a promising alternative to the commonly used morphing method for incorporating climate change variability into building energy designs. However, a comprehensive framework with a potential to accommodate this variability in this context is yet to be investigated. Addressing this gap, the present study aims to propose a novel framework that can facilitate dynamic design upgrades in response to the changing climate including the extreme climate conditions. This framework has been applied to a case study building in Australia and around 31% annual thermal load reduction, on average, has been achieved. Furthermore, the results showed that conventional design pathways are likely to leave buildings inadequately prepared against the upcoming climate conditions. Therefore, the proposed framework is capable of generating a dynamic design that not only maintains the expected energy performance by incorporating the changing climate into its structure but also draws a more realistic picture of the building energy demand pattern over time.