Climate change impact assessment in residential buildings utilizing RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios

Buildings - especially the residential buildings - are among the high priority areas in climate change due to their large share of CO2 emissions, their significant energy saving potentials and the increased comfort expectations of their occupants. A systematic and numerical investigation of how building performance will be affected by climate change in the future is crucial for both retrofitting the existing buildings and making long-term strategical decisions. This paper presents the simulation-based results of the climate change impact assessment for a typical multi-storey residential building in Istanbul. In this study, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios - representing the low/medium and high CO2 emission scenarios - defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are used to generate two different climate data sets for 2060. Three cooling scenarios (natural ventilation, hybrid ventilation and air-conditioned) have been developed to represent different building usage profiles for the building simulations. Investigated performance metrics were selected as building heating/cooling energy consumption, CO2 emission and occupant thermal comfort. Analysis results analysis show that the predicted temperature rise will have a strong impact on the building cooling energy consumption and/or occupant thermal comfort. The results indicate the necessity of taking measures for adaptation of buildings to the changing climate and the importance of decarbonization of electricity generation to mitigate the effects of climate change. This study will also serve as a basis for future retrofit studies for the changing climate.