Evaluation of climate change effects on residential building cooling and heating demands in New Zealand: implications for energy efficiency standards and building codes

PurposeClimate change reports from New Zealand claim that climate change will impact some cities such as Auckland from a heating-dominated to a cooling-dominated climate. The benefits and risks of climate change on buildings' thermal performance are still unknown. This paper examines the impacts of climate change on the energy performance of residential buildings in New Zealand and provides insight into changes in trends in energy consumption by quantifying the impacts of climate change.Design/methodology/approachThe present paper used a downscaling method to generate weather data for three locations in New Zealand: Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The weather data sets were applied to the energy simulation of a residential case study as a reference building using a validated building energy analysis tool (EnergyPlus).FindingsThe result indicated that in Wellington and Christchurch, heating would be the major thermal load of residential buildings, while in Auckland, the main thermal load will change from heating to cooling in future years. The revised R-values for the building code will affect the pattern of dominant heating and cooling demands in buildings in Auckland in the future, while in Wellington and Christchurch, the heating load will be higher than the cooling load.Originality/valueThe findings of this study gave a broader insight into the risks and opportunities of climate change for the thermal performance of buildings. The results established the significance of considering climate change in energy performance analysis to inform the appropriate building codes for the design of residential buildings to avoid future costly changes to buildings.