L Collins et al Climate change and future energy consumption in UK housing stock 2010

 Building Serv. Eng. Res. Technol. 31,1 (2010) pp. 75–90

This paper examines the likely effects on gas and electricity consumption and carbon emissions from heating and cooling systems in existing dwellings up to 2080, assuming a widespread uptake of cooling systems. This area of research is highly sensitive to the myriad of possible inputs and thus holds a wide range of predicted outcomes. However, general trends have been found, showing significant sensitivity to ventilation rate, U-values, occupant behaviour and location. Heating demand will still be dominant over cooling demand in UK dwellings by the 2080s, based on an UKCIP02 A1F1 weather scenario. A national worst case scenario for the 2050s, shows a 10 megatonne CO2 emissions saving on present levels largely due to a 20% reduction in gas consumption. Practical applications: The balance of heating and cooling demand causes more modest changes in CO2 than first anticipated. Despite first perceptions of future energy use in housing and climate change, heating appears to remain the major load rather than cooling, even into the 2080s. These predictions of future CO2 emissions will be useful to those in the building industry planning appropriate proportionate climate adaptation and climate mitigation measures. Also, the prediction of changes to future energy demands from the housing sector will be of interest to energy providers considering future demands for heating and cooling and may feed into larger bottom-up energy models.

Quotations:

Adaptation to future climates has to take

into account human factors such as attitudes

to acceptable lifestyle changes and public

awareness of climate change. The IPCC

have highlighted that occupant behaviour or

culture and consumer choice are major

determinants of energy use in buildings.

As existing properties will continue to repre-
sent a large proportion of UK housing stock
by 2050, efforts need to be focused on
improving existing stock as well as better
new build design. Despite testing a pessimistic
scenario with high cooling demands, the size of
the heating demand still far outweighs the
the effects of an increase in cooling load.Although
climate is predicted to warm up, UK
domestic property still has a significant heat-
ing load to bear. As climate change occurs,
winters will become milder and demand for
natural gas will reduce 20% by 2050. This is
due to climate change alone, without any
improvement in existing building stock. This
reverses the historic trend of increase, since the
1970s. Focus should be on reducing heating
load in existing homes, whilst not compromis-
ing building design for the emerging cooling
season. 

Relevance/Responses 

Methodology: A thermal simulation programme was used to theoretically test a range of dwelling types under different climatic conditions from the UKCIP02 scenarios. This was done to gain an

understanding of carbon emissions due to space conditioning at both individual dwelling and national level.

Adopts a business as usual case, with no adaptation/mitigation measures having been implemented, alos creates 'housing archetype' case studies which are then extrapolated to the entire housing stock.