Urban Climate Change Impacts on Building Heating and Cooling Energy Demand

This paper presents the results of a simulation study on the energy consumption for heating and cooling of a small office building within intra-urban microclimatic conditions of the Chicago metropolitan area. The study simulated a small office building per ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2013 with typical construction, heat gains, and operational patterns with a whole building energy simulation program eQuest 3.65 for selected locations. The results confirm that heating load decreases, and cooling load and overheating hours increase as the office location moves from rural (less developed) to urban (developed) sites, however these changes are influenced by the distance from the downtown and Lake Michigan. The results indicate that prominent intra-urban climatic variations are an important factor affecting energy performance. This research argues for the consideration of using weather files based on urban heat island (UHI) for the design of current buildings to safeguard their efficiency in the future.

keywords: Urban Climate, Heat Island Effect, Building Energy