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High-resolution impact assessment of climate change on building energy performance considering extreme weather events and microclimate – Investigating variations in indoor thermal comfort and degree-days

Mohammad Hosseini, Kavan Javanroodi, Vahid Moussavi Nik

Climate change and urbanization are two major challenges when planning for sustainable energy transition in cities. The common approach for energy demand estimation is using only typical meso-scale weather data in building energy models (BEMs), which underestimates the impacts of extreme climate and microclimate variations. To quantify the impacts of such underestimation on assessing the future energy performance of buildings, this study simulates a high spatiotemporal resolution BEM for two representative residential buildings located in a 600 × 600 m2 urban area in Southeast Sweden while accounting for both climate change and microclimate. Future climate data are synthesized using 13 future climate scenarios over 2010-2099, divided into three 30-year periods, and microclimate data are generated considering the urban morphology of the area. It is revealed that microclimate can cause 17% rise in cooling degree-day (CDD) and 7% reduction in heating degree-day (HDD) on average compared to mesoclimate. Considering typical weather conditions, CDD increases by 45% and HDD decreases by 8% from one 30-year period to another. Differences can become much larger during extreme weather conditions. For example, CDD can increase by 500% in an extreme warm July compared to a typical one. Results also indicate that annual cooling demand becomes four and five times bigger than 2010-2039 in 2040-2069 and 2070-2099, respectively. The daily peak cooling load can increase up to 25% in an extreme warm day when accounting for microclimate. In the absence of cooling systems during extreme warm days, the indoor temperature stays above 26°C continuously over a week and reaches above 29.2°C. Moreover, the annual overheating hours can increase up to 140% in the future. These all indicate that not accounting for influencing climate variations can result in maladaptation or insufficient adaptation of urban areas to climate change.

2022

Climate change and energy performance of European residential building stocks-A comprehensive impact assessment using climate big data from the coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment

Kavan Javanroodi, Vahid Moussavi Nik, Yuchen Yang

In recent years, climate change and the corresponding expected extreme weather conditions have been widely recognized as potential problems. The building industry is taking various actions to achieve sustainable development, implement energy conservation strategies, and provide climate change mitigation. In addition to mitigation, it is crucial to adapt to climate change, and to investigate the possible risks and limitations of mitigation strategies. Although the importance of climate change adaptation is well-understood, there are still challenges in understanding and modeling the impacts of climate change, and the consequent risks and extremes. This work provides a comprehensive study of the impacts of climate change on the energy performances and thermal comfort of European residential building stocks. To perform an unbiased assessment and account for climate uncertainties and extreme events, a large set of future climate data was used for a 90-year period (2010-2099). Climate data for 38 European cities in five different climate zones, downscaled by the "RCA4" regional climate model, were synthesized and applied to simulate the respective energy performances of the residential building stocks in the cities. The results suggest that there will be larger needs for cooling buildings in the future and less heating demand; however, there are differences in the variation rates between zones and cities. Discomfort hours will increase notably in cities within cooling-dominated zones, but will not be affected considerably in cities within heating-dominated zones. In addition to long-term changes, climate-induced extremes can considerably affect future energy demands, especially the cooling demand; this may become challenging for both buildings and energy systems.

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2021

Climate resilient interconnected infrastructure: Co-optimization of energy systems and urban morphology

Kavan Javanroodi, Vahid Moussavi Nik, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun Perera

Co-optimization of urban morphology and distributed energy systems is key to curb energy consumption and optimally exploit renewable energy in cities. Currently available optimization techniques focus on either buildings or energy systems, mostly neglecting the impact of their interactions, which limits the renewable energy integration and robustness of the energy infrastructure; particularly in extreme weather conditions. To move beyond the current state-of-the-art, this study proposes a novel methodology to optimize urban energy systems as interconnected urban infrastructures affected by urban morphology. A set of urban morphologies representing twenty distinct neighborhoods is generated based on fifteen influencing parameters. The energy performance of each urban morphology is assessed and optimized for typical and extreme warm and cold weather datasets in three time periods from 2010 to 2039, 2040 to 2069, and 2070 to 2099 for Athens, Greece. Pareto optimization is conducted to generate an optimal energy system and urban morphology. The results show that a thus optimized urban morphology can reduce the levelized cost for energy infrastructure by up to 30%. The study reveals further that the current building form and urban density of the modelled neighborhoods will lead to an increase in the energy demand by 10% and 27% respectively. Furthermore, extreme climate conditions will increase energy demand by 20%, which will lead to an increment in the levelized cost of energy infrastructure by 40%. Finally, it is shown that co-optimization of both urban morphology and energy system will guarantee climate resilience of urban energy systems with a minimum investment.

2021

Mohammad Hosseini, Kavan Javanroodi, Vahid Moussavi Nik

2022

Climate change and energy performance of European residential building stocks-A comprehensive impact assessment using climate big data from the coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment

Kavan Javanroodi, Vahid Moussavi Nik, Yuchen Yang

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2021