Planning Strategy for Urban Building Energy Conservation Supported by Agent-Based Modeling

Abstract

As a systematic, preventive, and structural adjustment method of improving building energy conservation and carbon emission reduction, urban planning has received extensive attention. However, due to the insufficient interface between energy-saving technology and urban planning systems, urban planning has not properly played a role in building energy conservation. Scientific and innovative technical methods are urgently needed to explore the role of coordinating multiple effective planning elements in overall building energy conservation through urban planning means. Due to climate conditions, there is high demand for conserving building energy in severe cold regions, but research into this has not been thoroughly carried out. Harbin, located in the northeast of China, belongs to the Dwa zone of the Köppen–Geiger Climate Classification, and is also a typical city of severe cold regions where the daily average temperature is lower than 5 °C for more than 145 days in a year. This study takes Harbin as an example and uses agent-based modeling to establish an urban-scale building energy consumption simulation model. The model contains four types of agents (a global agent, building agent, residential agent, and household equipment agent) and two types of influence factor modules (an urban form module and a climate module). Three simulation scenarios were designed, including a baseline scenario, an urban form scenario, and a climate scenario. The baseline scenario provided an overview of the urban-scale building energy consumption distribution characteristics of Harbin and served as a reference group for the simulation results of other scenarios. The urban form scenario results show that when the elements with a highly significant impact change by 1 unit, the retail building block has the most obvious change in energy consumption, up to 44.7 × 106 kWh/105 m2/year, while the office building block has the lowest change, with 34.5 × 103 kWh/105 m2/year. The fluctuation of electricity is the most obvious, but the total change is lower than the heating energy consumption. The climate scenario shows that the energy consumption of residential land in urban centers will consistently rise in the next 50 years, up to 5.3 × 105 kWh/105 m2/year. Based on these results, this study puts forward future building energy conservation planning strategies for Harbin, focusing on three aspects: the planning and control of urban form, the optimization and adjustment of the climate, and the building energy conservation planning system. These research results are expected to provide scientific support for transforming Harbin into a low-carbon city.