Buildings; Energy consumption; cooling systems; climate change; passive cooling; active cooling
Abstract :
[en] 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 presented the results obtained by simulating heating and cooling systems using DesignBuilder while taking into consideration the influence of climate change on the performance of the systems. This study used 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 presented a performance comparison between 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.
Disciplines :
Energy
Author, co-author :
El Nagar, Essam ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Aérospatiale et Mécanique (A&M)
Lemort, Vincent ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Aérospatiale et Mécanique (A&M)
Language :
English
Title :
Cooling Concepts for Residential Buildings: A Comparison Under Climate Change Scenarios
Publication date :
2022
Event name :
7th International Herrick Conference on High Performance Buildings (Herrick 2022)
Event organizer :
Purdue University
Event place :
Indiana, United States
Event date :
10/07/2022 - 14/07/2022
By request :
Yes
Audience :
International
Main work title :
Proceedings of the 7th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue (Herrick 2022)
Publisher :
Purdue University, Indiana, United States
Peer reviewed :
Peer reviewed
Development Goals :
7. Affordable and clean energy 11. Sustainable cities and communities 13. Climate action
Funders :
ULiège - University of Liège [BE]
Funding text :
This research was partially funded by the Walloon Region under the call ‘Actions de Recherche Concertées 2019 (ARC)’ and the project OCCuPANt, on the Impacts Of Climate Change on the indoor environmental and energy PerformAnce of buildiNgs in Belgium during summer. The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Walloon Region and Liege University for funding. This study is a part of the International Energy Agency Annex 80 project activities to define resilient cooling in residential buildings.
