Impacts of climate change on U.S. building energy use by using downscaled hourly future weather data

Case studies in four representative cities in the U.S. show that climate change is to have great impacts on residential and office building energy use during the year of 2040-2069. The change of annual energy use is predicted to range from −1.64% to 14.07% for residential building and from −3.27% to −0.12% for office building under A2 scenario (a carbon emission scenarios defined by IPCC) in different regions. The research results suggest that the climate change will narrow the gap of energy use for residential buildings located in cold and hot climate regions in the U.S. and generally reduce office building energy use in the future. It is also found that the energy use of lightings and fans will slightly decrease in the future. Moreover, the growing peak electricity load during cooling seasons is going to exert greater pressure for the future grid.