Passive Design Strategies in Focus: Implications of Climate Change on New Buildings and Renovations

Climate change is happening, and there is a general consensus that measures to drastically reduce emissions must be taken. Nevertheless, its implications on new buildings and renovations are not fully understood yet. Bioclimatic building design is based on the knowledge of passive design strategies potential for a location. However, traditionally used passive strategies may no longer be the correct design approach in the future. A methodological contribution for the assessment of the influence of climate change on passive building strategies in temperate climates is presented. Based on the top priority Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios of the 6th assessment report (AR6) the shared socio-economic pathways (SSP) and their equivalences with the prior representative concentration pathways (RCP), the effects of climate change on different cooling and heating strategies are examined for a continental temperate-cold desert climate with significant daily and annual variation. The results are integrated directly into a selected case study with the intention of exemplifying a concrete application. The findings of this study showed that the shading season is expanding even toward the transitional months, such as April and October. Future climate-adapted buildings in temperate climatic zones will have to confront overheating. Moreover, in the particular studied case, present and future total energy requirements seem similar and variations are perceived as low between scenarios. The main discussion focuses on the type of energy required that will turn from natural gas (net to primary energy conversion factor = 1.25) to electricity (net to primary energy conversion factor = 3.30).