On the Impact of Climate Change on Building Energy Consumptions: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The body of literature on climate change impacts on building energy consumption is rising, driven by the urgency to implement adaptation measures. Nevertheless, the multitude of prediction methodologies, future scenarios, as well as climate zones investigated, results in a wide range of expected changes. For these reasons, the present review aims to map climate change impacts on building energy consumption from a quantitative perspective and to identify potential relationships between energy variation and a series of variables that could affect them, including heating and cooling degree-days (HDDs and CDDs), reference period, future time slices and IPCC emission scenarios, by means of statistical techniques. In addition, an overview of the main characteristics of the studies related to locations investigated, building types and methodological approaches are given. To sum up, global warming leads to: (i) decrease in heating consumptions; (ii) increase in cooling consumption; (iii) growth in total consumptions, with notable differences between climate zones. No strong correlation between the parameters was found, although a moderate linear correlation was identified between heating variation and HDDs, and total variation and HDDs. The great variability of the collected data demonstrates the importance of increasing specific impact studies, required to identify appropriate adaptation strategies.