Investigation on strategies to minimize impacts of global temperature rise on air conditioning cooling load demand of existing buildings

Abstract

Energy demand for building air conditioning and heating account for a significant fraction of the global electricity demand. With global average temperatures projected to increase throughout the 21st century, building energy demand and consumption are slated to also increase. Even though climate resilient building energy management has been identified as a key research area to date, there have been a very little studies conducted to estimate the sensitivity of electricity demand for air conditioning to the climate variability. Most of the energy efficient building codes are mainly focused on new buildings, while the existing buildings pose a significant threat to the building air conditioning energy loads. The localized studies are important in this regard, as the air conditioning loads significantly vary with the local ambient conditions. The impacts of climate change on building air conditioning energy demand for existing buildings can be reduced by establishing future energy demand patterns and by effective usage of passive cooling strategies. Hence, this study focused on investigating the current demand for building air conditioning in selected existing buildings and forecast energy demand for predicted future climate scenarios to establish the electricity demand patterns and investigate effectiveness of passive cooling strategies to counteract the effects of climate change on cooling energy usage of existing buildings. The study used data driven black box and hybrid grey box models to predict the indoor temperature using RCP emission scenarios. The model results were then used to predict the cooling demand increase for the selected building zones. It was observed that cooling demand can increase on average by 20% and 50% by 2035 and 2090 respectively while the suggested mitigation tactics are able to reduce the demand increase by approximately 30%. The knowledge gained by the investigation will have a significant importance in terms of mitigating climate change challenges and identifying counteracting measures in neutralizing climate effect in building cooling energy in different climate environments.