The Effect of Climate Conditions on the Relation between Energy Efficiency and Urban Form

Katerina Tsikaloudaki,Dimitra Tsirigoti

doi:10.3390/en11030582

Abstract

Urban sustainability has been connected to form and compactness of the urban tissue. At the same time the relationship between urban form and energy efficiency is strongly affected by climate. This paper investigates the effect of climate conditions on the relation between urban morphology and energy efficiency of urban blocks, focusing on the Greek city context. A set of building block typologies is analyzed with regard to their form factors such as S/V ratio, coverage ratio and building ratio for the climatic conditions of two cities, each one belonging to a different climatic zone. Heating and cooling loads are calculated at an urban block scale for the climate of the city of Thessaloniki (zone C) and of the city of Heraklion (zone A) in order to draw conclusions about the relation between geometry factors and energy efficiency. The results of the research indicate that there is a strong relationship between urban morphology factors and energy efficiency and that the total load demand of urban blocks can be described as a function of form parameters. Results of the research, concerning the energy demand calculation, are valuable since they indicate the energy profile of each typology according to climate and can be used for defining different urban strategies towards sustainability in a context-based climate dependent analysis.

Highlights

The study of the environmental quality of the urban space is connected to the built environment as a key factor for achieving sustainability
Greek city centers have been constructed before simulations on different orientation angles have pointed out that the difference on total load when it comes to energy efficiency
The analysis focuses on defining the relation between the urban form parameters and the energy performance in two different climatic zones of Greece

Summary

Introduction

The study of the environmental quality of the urban space is connected to the built environment as a key factor for achieving sustainability. The aim of this paper is to define patterns of sustainability in the existing urban tissue of the Greek city. The assessment of existing urban configurations can on the one hand contribute to a great extent on the identification of the factors that create more or less energy efficient urban areas and on the other hand on the definition of the way these factors affect the overall energy performance of buildings. Compact cities have been considered as the main reason for the low quality of life owed at the resulting increased density of urban areas [1,2,3,4,5]. It is a fact that energy efficiency at the urban scale is not always easy to be predicted as factors defining the energy demand are often contradictory

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