Impact of climate change on the design of energy efficient residential building envelopes

Climate change has been shown to significantly alter the heating and cooling needed to maintain thermal comfort within a home. However, limited studies have investigated the impact on the design philosophy associated with achieving an energy efficient building envelope with the onset of climate change. Applying robust future TMY for 2070 the change in heating and cooling demand has been studied in this paper for various combinations of external and internal wall insulation, roof insulation, reflective foil, thermally reflective roofs and different floor coverings. A building thermal model was used for the mild temperate climate of Adelaide, Australia, which requires both heating and cooling, but is dominated by heating. Climate change was found to increase and shift this demand to cooling dominated. It was determined that with climate change, heating becomes significantly less important in better insulated buildings and therefore measures which reduce cooling load are more critical. It is concluded that in this climate zone, climate change design approaches need to dramatically change to focus on cooling, contrary to present strategies.