The Effect of Climate Change on the Design of Building Stocks' Energy Performance Requirements the Case of the province of València, Spain.

Abstract

European buildings play a pivotal role in achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Buildings' long lifetimes require long-term policies to avoid lock-in effects when designing national plans. However, the rapid climate change witnessed over the past decades and future projections make it necessary to carefully reevaluate policies under new climate realities. At the same time, having a clear understanding of the energy needs of building stocks is complex. This work aims to contribute to gaining an understanding of the energy demand of building stocks following a bottom-up approach. To do so, official data sources and tools for the Spanish building context are used in combination with climate data sources. Four historical climate scenarios over the past two decades are compared to the reference one. This longitudinal assessment allows evaluating if current energy requirements are effective in the long-term to decarbonise the sector. Results for the province of València, 1.4 million dwellings, show that the official energy certification procedure underestimates total demand by 10% and the cooling demand by 50%, while heating is overestimated by 14%. In addition, it leads to a large number of discomfort hours greater than 1,000 hours per year. These results call for a revision of the building energy certification procedure in Spain.