The impact of climate change on the energy demand and indoor climate of an apartment building in Stockholm

Abstract: With an increasing global concern about climate change, an important topic for the building industry is how climate change will affect the energy behaviour of buildings and their indoor thermal comfort levels. Many residential buildings do not fulfil the healthy requirements regarding indoor temperatures due to poor design even with the current climate conditions. The building stock has a mean lifespan of 50 - 100 years and many researches have already been conducted, in order to predict its behaviour over its life cycle. However, national or community design criteria for buildings and current standard weather data are not adapted to the potential impacts of climate change, particularly to the risk of overheating periods during summers.This paper describes the process of creation and integration of future climate scenarios for Sweden in 2070 and analyses the importance of climate change on the built environment through a case study building in the area of Stockholm. The building represents a modern building of today with a low energy demand and total compliance with the health requirements for indoor comfort. Building simulations are performed through the simulation software IDA-ICE and the results demonstrate the significant impact of climate change on premises due to the summer overheating. A decreasing trend in heating energy demands and the need of comfort cooling to fulfil health requirement of indoor comfort due to changing climate conditions in the future are observed. Although, the total building property energy demand, including cooling demand as well, is less in the future compared to today. This paper describes the relationship between climate change and buildings and could provide a useful knowledge background on the issue of adaptation and resilience of buildings for the next 50 years.