The feasibility of retrofitting existing office buildings to combat energy consumption due to future climate change in three key regions of China



Chow, David ORCID: 0000-0002-5963-6228 and Sharples, Steve ORCID: 0000-0002-6309-9672
(2015) The feasibility of retrofitting existing office buildings to combat energy consumption due to future climate change in three key regions of China. In: First International Conference on Sustainable Buildings and Structures, 2015-10-29 - 2015-10-31, Suzhou, China.

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Abstract

As China goes through the present phase of rapid urbanisation, there is an urgent need to reduce the energy consumption per unit area in buildings in order to mitigate a sudden surge in total energy usage in buildings. At the same time, buildings are expected to last longer, so they will also need to account for effects of future climate change. Much of China’s existing buildings are not considered energy-efficient, and retrofitting these buildings to perform in the future would be a much less energy-intensive strategy than demolishing them and building new replacements. This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of retrofitting existing office buildings in three different climate regions of China. These include the “Cold” region in the north, which includes Beijing; the “Hot Summer Mild Winter” region in the south, which includes Guangzhou, and two re-gions from the “Hot Summer Cold Winter”, which includes cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing. Using data from the climate model, HadCM3, Test Reference Years are generated for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s, for various IPCC future scenarios for these cities, and using computer simulation, the feasibility of retrofitting of-fice buildings to perform in the face of climate change in these regions is investigated. For the “Cold” region, simulation results suggest that energy reductions of up to 30% with improvements to the building enclosure is possible by retrofitting current existing office buildings to the current Chinese National Standard for the re-gion. Retrofitting in the ““Hot Summer Mild Winter” region could reduce energy consumption by 45%, but the effects of retrofitting in the “Hot Summer Cold Winter” region are less profound. Requirements for com-bating possible increases in energy consumption from heating and cooling demands due to future climate change was also investigated, and it was found that with the exception of Shanghai, by simply improving U-Values of the building envelope to the new national standards, the effects of future climate change can be nul-lified up to the 2080s. Further improvements to having similar standards as developed countries such as Eng-land and Wales will have less significance and may not be able to nullify the effects of climate change from the newly retrofitted office buildings. However, this could be achieved by involving other energy-saving strategies and installing suitable energy-saving technologies for the regions.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 21 Oct 2015 16:00
Last Modified: 17 Dec 2022 00:47
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2033019