Impacts of Climate Change and Urbanization on Future Building Performance

With the increasing interest in climate change driven by human activity, recent research has focused on the impact of climate change or urban heat island on building operation and performance across the world. But this work usually aggregates the energy and peak demand impacts across a broad sector. In a recent study, impacts on the operating performance of an office building were estimated based on climate change and heat island scenarios in 25 locations (20 climate regions). This presentation presents the variation and differences among the 20 regions when climate change is introduced. The focus is on changes in comfort conditions, building equipment operation as well as daily patterns of energy performance using prototypical buildings that represent typical, good, and low-energy practices around the world. Other issues such as fuel swapping as heating and cooling ratios change, impacts on environmental emissions, and how low-energy building design incorporating renewables can significantly mitigate any potential climate variation are also presented.

Speaker Bio

Dru Crawley is Bentley Fellow and Director, Building Performance Research focusing on building performance, zero-energy buildings, decarbonization, digital twins, smart cities, sustainability, and resilience. Prior to being elevated to Bentley Fellow in 2014, he led development of Bentley’s building performance software suite for four years. Before joining Bentley in 2010, Dr. Crawley developed and managed EnergyPlus and the USDOE’s Commercial Buildings Initiative (now Better Buildings Initiative and Alliances) promoting creation of net-zero-energy buildings.

With more than 40 years of experience in buildings energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainability, he has worked in engineering software development, government research and standards development organizations, as well as building design and consulting companies. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland on the topic of building simulation as a policy tool, and a Bachelor of Architecture from University of Tennessee, and is a registered architect.

Read more about the speaker here - https://xp20.ashrae.org/secure/dl/DL_new/profile.php?id=21.