The Impact of Climate Updates on the Energy Performance Assessment in a Legislative Framework
(2022) SSRN Electronic Journal — (2022)
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- Abstract
- In North-West Europe the legislative focus to reduce ta building’s energy consumption has historically grown to mainly concentrate on limiting the heat losses. However, due to global warming, this strategy has caused buildings to increasingly endure overheating problems. In Flanders, Belgium, the energy performance framework uses climate data from 1958 until 1975. This outdated assumption could result in wrong incentives towards building owners regarding heating and cooling strategies. In this research, five alternative climate scenarios were constructed accounting for global warming and micro-climates. These scenarios were simulated on a sample of the Flemish building stock, taking into account different typologies and building performance levels. We discuss the impact of the alternative scenarios on the energy performance, the shift from heating loads towards cooling loads and on overheating. The analysis shows that warmer climate scenarios are most problematic for compact buildings and buildings which are thoroughly insulated. Also, it becomes difficult to tackle overheating with passive measures and thus the need for active cooling will become more difficult to avoid. There is a need for policy makers to re-evaluate their legislative framework to account for the changing climate. Future research could aid in assessing different adaptation.
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Citations
Van den Brande, K., Van Moeseke, G., Heijmans, N., Bracke, W., Delghust, M., & Janssens, A. (2022). The Impact of Climate Updates on the Energy Performance Assessment in a Legislative Framework. SSRN Electronic Journal. Submitted. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4245584 (Original work published 2022)