IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON NET-ZERO ENERGY BUILDING IN THE TROPICS

Abstract

Climate change is a worldwide issue that is affecting every country. With buildings accounting for 20% of Singapore’s carbon emissions, the nation has announced a new set of ambitious sustainability targets for the built environment industry under the Singapore Green Building Masterplan. One of the targets was to have 80% of the new buildings to reach the Super Low Energy targets from 2030. Therefore, it is expected that buildings will likely steer towards the direction of sustainability in the coming years, where the concept of net-zero energy or positive energy would be adopted. The performance of such buildings will be affected by climate change, which can modify future meteorological trends experienced around the world. Hence, the viability of such concepts being adopted in buildings remains a question under the effect of climate change.

This study uses a case study approach to explore the impacts of climate change on net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs) in the tropics. The selected case study building is the School of Design and Environment 4 (SDE4) located in Singapore. The implications of climate change on NZEBs were assessed by running a building energy simulation using the future weather file and the model of SDE4. The simulation was conducted under four shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) at four future time points, amounting to a total of 16 cases. The results show that SDE4 will not miss its net-zero energy target under all the selected SSP pathways in future years.