Impacts of climate change upon cooling and heating energy demand of office buildings in Vienna, Austria

• Future energy demands of office buildings under the premises of climate change strongly depend upon their date of construction.
• Older buildings display high heating demands today and will slightly profit form climate induced reductions.
• In older buildings heating decreases slightly counteract considerable increases in cooling efforts.
• The resulting, overall energy input in older buildings stagnates on high level.
• Modern buildings with high cooling demands will see stagnation or increasing overall energy input.

Recent years have witnessed growing concern about climate change's impact upon office buildings’ performance in regard to energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort. A vicious circle of raising outdoor temperatures and consequently increasing CO2 emissions associated with raising energy demands for cooling during summer heat waves is anticipated in this respect.This paper builds upon regionally downscaled weather data from future climate scenarios and applies these to dynamic thermal simulation of nine sample office buildings in Vienna, Austria. Values of both heating and cooling demands under current and future conditions are calculated and compared: while heating demands slightly diminish, cooling requirements generally rise significantly. Distinct differences in energy performance of buildings from different periods of construction can be observed. Due to the buildings’ respective constructions its overall energy demand raise, stagnate or even slightly decrease under conditions of climate change.

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