The Impact of Varying Future Weather Condition on the Energy Consumption within Leeds City Centre with Reference to the Urban Heat Island Effect
Climate change is having an exponential impact on global temperatures causing temperature increases and variations. Consequently, selecting appropriate weather data for building simulation is crucial for predicting future energy consumption. This paper numerically investigates the impact of future weather data from urbanised areas has on the simulated energy consumption of a city centre office building in Leeds, UK. The results intend to aid building and construction professionals to accurately determine the optimum passive characteristics of buildings to reduce energy consumption as a result of the changing weather conditions. Specifically, the proposed study uses the UK Climate Projections 2018 (UKCP18) future weather data to simulate both the present and future years for 2020, 2050 and 2080. Basically, the future weather data shows an increase in maximum mean air temperatures in summer which will result in an increase of cooling demand for the office building. However, minimum mean air temperatures in winter are not increasing to caveat maximums and are remaining constant. Therefore, the temperature range for the future weather conditions is increasingly adding more passive design considerations for building and construction professionals. Moreover, it is found that the heating load of the building remains constant, while the cooling load steadily increases. Overall, the energy consumption of the office building sees an exponential increase in the future years.