Adapting building design to climate change for an office building in Stockholm through solar control techniques

Abstract: Climate change will affect many human activities and sectors. Among those, the built environment will face several challenges with respect to the varying climate conditions. The present study investigated the global warming impacts on energy demand and indoor climate comfort for an office building in Stockholm. Considering a service life of 50 years, the future climate conditions were investigated for the only air temperature increase in 2070, in accordance with the medium forecasted greenhouse gas emissions scenario provided by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Another climate morphing approach was adopted to develop the climate file for the year 2080 considering the variation of all the weather parameters. Three different passive cooling solutions, such as external roller shade, electrochromic glazing, and internally ventilated shading, have been implemented in the case study building to decrease the cooling demand. The characteristics of the strategies were preliminarily assessed and then implemented into the building energy simulation software IDA-ICE to evaluate the energy performances with respect to the different climates. The results indicated that an increment of the cooling demand and a reduction of the heating usage will be experienced in the future. The different morphing approaches displayed the inherent uncertainties when future evaluations are performed, although similar weather patterns were found. The improvement of the solar and optical properties, such as the introduction of the exhaust air extraction and the electrochromic technology, implied a lower cooling and ventilation usage. The EC technology reported the lowest cooling demand, while the internally ventilated shading option outperformed the others in terms of annual energy consumption.