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Cooling concepts for residential buildings: a comparison under climate change scenarios.

Number: 3341

Author(s) : ELNAGAR E., LEMORT V.

Summary

Buildings in the EU account for 40% of our energy consumption and 36% of our greenhouse gas emissions, with HVAC systems being the biggest contributors. With the predicted increase in global air temperature up to 4.8 K by the end of this century, cooling will be the most rapidly increasing energy-consuming technology in buildings. Heat pumps are one of the most energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. In this paper, the energy performance of three different cooling concepts including an air-to-air heat pump in a residential building is assessed with the impact of climate change on the heating and cooling energy demands under future climatic scenarios in Belgium. The paper presents the results obtained by simulating heating and cooling systems based on using DesignBuilder while taking into consideration the influence of climate change on the performance of the split AC system. This study uses several weather data sets one forced by a reanalysis model on the past period (1980-2020) and three forced by Earth System Models (ESM) on past (1980-2014) and future periods (2015-2100). The paper also presents a performance comparison between the passive cooling technologies such as natural ventilation and active cooling system such as split AC systems in Belgium. The Indoor Overheating Degree (IOhD) indicator is used to assess the thermal comfort and overheating discomfort in the building. The obtained results showed that the climate plays an important role in the final energy end-use for heating and cooling, the final heating energy end-use decreases by 40% while the final cooling energy end-use increases by 187% by the end of the century. The results also showed that the IOhD using passive cooling scenarios such as natural ventilation decreased by 77% in 2090s compared to the base case where there is only a mechanical ventilation system, while using an active cooling system such as a split AC system could maintain the thermal comfort almost all the time in the future weather scenarios. This paper is part of an ongoing study, the objective of the ongoing study, of which some results are presented in this paper, is to upscale the impact of climate change on the Belgian residential building stock and to evaluate its influence on the future heating and cooling energy demands.

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  • Original title: Cooling concepts for residential buildings: a comparison under climate change scenarios.
  • Record ID : 30030227
  • Languages: English
  • Source: 2022 Purdue Conferences. 7th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue.
  • Publication date: 2022

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