Impacts of the Climate Change Signal on Regional Peak and Annual Building Energy Demand

This presentation discusses a numerical experiment examining the impact of climate change on peak demand and annual building energy consumption in a fourteen-state region in the Midwest section of the United States due to changes in mean climate characteristics as well as changes in the frequency and duration of intense weather events. The model being used is the new Building Energy Demand Model (BEND), developed as part of a laboratory initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory called the integrated Regional Earth System Model (iRESM). BEND has as its core the EnergyPlus model, a validated state-of-the art building energy analysis and thermal load simulation program developed for the U.S. Department of Energy. The experiment examines hourly building energy demand during the period 2005-2100 using the detailed BEND model, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) A2 scenario and a mid-range mitigation scenario IPCC B1 scenario. Hundreds of different types, sizes, vintages, and building configurations, which represent the population of buildings, are modeled using the climate data from dozens of locations within the target region. Building stock characteristics are calibrated to 2005 and held constant throughout both simulation periods to isolate the impact of the climate signal.