The impact of climate change on thermal climate zones and residential energy efficiency designs during the past decades in China

ABSTRACT In this paper, the impact of climate change on thermal climate zones was reported by using more recent weather data published by the China’s National Climate Center. The impact of these changes on current building energy standards was also investigated. To quantitatively analyse the potential impact of these changes on building energy consumption, building energy simulation techniques were used. This study has found that 27 of the 200 cities investigated in this analysis are assigned to new thermal climate zones, and most of these cities have shifted into a warmer climate zone. Three cities shift into uncategorized zone. According to the building energy standards for residential buildings, the maximum U-factor allowed for building envelope will increase and overall shading coefficient allowed for windows will decrease when the city is reassigned into a warmer zone. The simulation results show that it will generally have an adverse effect on building energy savings for residential buildings. The outcomes of this study reveal that current thermal climate zones cannot provide an adequate instruction for building energy efficiency and updating building energy standards, and thermal climate zones is necessary in future.