Improving thermal comfort and energy use in future buildings.

GANEM, CAROLINA; BAREA, GUSTAVO; MOLINA, MARIA CECILIA; MATEO, PIA

Climate Change and Sustainable Development in the Built Environment.

Taylor & Francis

Año: 2025; p. 1 - 15

This chapter examines how climate change will affect energy use in future buildings in four cities with temperate, semi-arid, cold and Mediterranean climates: Mendoza and Madrid (BSk), and Barcelona and Rome (CSa). For this purpose, different future climate scenarios proposed by the IPCC in the CMIP6 reports (SSP 3.70 and SSP 5.85) for the years 2050 and 2080 are developed. In order to establish a relationship between the variation of the future average outdoor temperature (°C) and the energy required for space conditioning (kWh/m2), several metrics are analyzed, such as standard deviation, HDD, CDD, frequency and duration of heat waves (Ouzeau's method). The first results show a linear relationship between these two parameters: for every 1°C increase in outdoor temperature, 3.32 kWh of energy is required in Mendoza. In the case of Madrid, this value is 3.58 kWh/m2, while in the case of Barcelona and Rome, the requirements are 4.80 and 5.62 kWh/m2 respectively. Such projections of the thermal and energy demand of buildings highlight the need to adapt design and construction strategies to an evolving environmental context. The results show a significant increase in shading requirements of 18.6% in Mendoza and 16.2% in Madrid. In Barcelona and Rome, shading needs are also increasing, reaching values of 12.7% and 15.1% respectively. The chapter discusses how awareness of the estimated increase in the need for passive summer strategies is essential to improve energy use in new designs and renovations, and to ensure the achievement of thermal comfort by natural means in future buildings.