Climate change, thermal comfort and energy: Meeting the design challenges of the 21st century

This paper addresses the dual challenge of designing sustainable low-energy buildings while still providing thermal comfort under warmer summer conditions produced by anthropogenic climate change—a key challenge for building designers in the 21st century. The main focus is towards buildings that are ‘free running’ for some part of the summer, either being entirely naturally ventilated or mixed-mode (where mechanical cooling is only used when thought to be essential). Because the conditions in these buildings will vary from day to day it is important to understand how people react and adapt to their environment. A summary is made of recent developments in this area and of the climate data required to assess building performance. Temperatures in free running buildings are necessarily closely linked to those outside. Because the climate is changing and outside summer temperatures are expected to increase, the future will offer greater challenges to the designers of sustainable buildings aiming to provide either entirely passive or low-energy comfort cooling. These issues are demonstrated by predictions of the performance of some case study buildings under a climate change scenario. The examples also demonstrate some of the important principles associated with climate-sensitive low-energy design.