Analysis of Climate Change Impact on the Energy Performance of Small Dwellings Located in Porto

Abstract

The energy performance of buildings is heavily affected by weather conditions. This study evaluates the impact of climate change on the heating and cooling energy demand in dwellings located in Porto, Portugal. A synthetic dataset of 50 generated two-storey residential buildings is evaluated using dynamic simulation to assess the energy consumption for air-conditioning in three future climate change weather years. The reference weather dataset corresponds to representative months of measurements from the 1990s, while the future weather data (30-year means) are morphed from Global Circulation Model (GCM) Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3 (HadCM3), for the projected years of 2020, 2050, and 2080. The main conclusions are that energy demand will increase in every climate change projection year for all generated buildings and some geometries present higher resilience to energy performance variation, thus requiring further studies to determine the best design guidelines for future scenario of warming climate.