The influence of climate change on renewable energy systems designed to achieve zero energy buildings in the present: A case study in the Brazilian Savannah

The increase in external temperature results in higher energy consumption to maintain internal thermal quality, with Zero Energy Building (ZEB) being an alternative and a mandatory trend in some countries. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how climate change will affect the ZEBs, considering as a parameter the Fourth Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The object of study is a house located at latitude 15 degrees S in the centre of South America. It was used computational simulation to create future climate scenarios of 2020 (2011 to 2040), 2050 (2041 to 2070) and 2080 (2071 to 2100). Energy consumption was predicted in the current scenario with and without photovoltaic energy generation, establishing a ZEB base case. Results showed that there will be an increase in energy demand over the years, and showed that the photovoltaic system will become out of date, that is, it will not able to meet this new demand, from around 14.1% by the 2020s, 26.3% for the 2050s and 40.2% for the 2080 period. It provides subsidies for reflection on buildings energy consumption trends and de-characterization of the ZEB concept in a short period.