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ABSTRACT
Buildings designed and built in cold climates, such as Canada, are typically optimized for minimizing heating energy demand, however, with climate change, these buildings may experience increased cooling energy demand and overheating risk during the summer. This paperpresents the evaluation of the effect of climate change on the thermal conditions of multi-unit residential buildings that meet the current energy code and Passive House (PH) requirements under historical weather year, future horizon years and extreme warm conditions (heat wave) through simulations. A wood-frame mid-rise and a pour-in-place concrete high-rise multi unit residential building are selected as case study buildings.
INTRODUCTION
Our climate is changing and the results of that are already clear, visible and challenge every aspect of our lives. Some of these climate change aspects are the global warming, increased precipitation, rising sea level, hurricanes, etc. NASA Global Climate Change data showed that the global mean temperatures are rising faster with time and the hottest four years were 2016, 2017, 2015 and 2014. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reveals that the high concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are the main causes of climate change. For instance, the CO2 emissions increased by 54% in the period between 2002 and 2011 compared to 1990. The building sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions with a ratio of up to 39%. To reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from building sector, worldwide efforts are being made to increase energy efficiency of buildings. For instance, the European Union (EU), California-US and British Columbia (BC)-Canada have specified that by the end of 2020, 2020 and 2032, respectively, all new buildings shall be nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. These measures will significantly reduce the energy consumption of buildings. However, the common practice for evaluating energy performance of buildings is to use the typical historical weather data (1961-1990). The uncertainty due to the variation of weather is one of the main reasons for the discrepancy between the model predicted and the actual energy performance. Low-energy buildings' performance may be considerably affected by such undesired changes in the weather data in future years. The impact of future climates on the building performance has...