Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Building Energy Use

Abstract

The built environment is central to an effective global strategy to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.For design practitioners, the mitigation component is clear and well established.On the other hand, adaptation, which describes a building's resilience to respond to climate change related hazards, is generally not part of the design process, but is equally important.The objectives of this article are to 1) raise awareness of the importance of climate change adaptation, particularly for the building design community, 2) increase understanding of the need for, and underlying sources and assumptions of future weather data, and 3) provide examples of climate change impacts on building energy use.