Climate change impact on a green building

The concept of a green building (GB) implies a building that has implemented several sustainable strategies to increase its resilience to climate change. These types of buildings are designed to be aligned with the climate and location where they stand. Therefore, the strategies used are highly dependent on the outdoor climate and may require changes in the future due to global warming. Evaluating the present energy performance in these buildings and predicting any changes in future climate scenarios is crucial to understand if the strategies adopted initially will maintain efficient. This research aims to predict the resilience of a GB to global warming. It predicts the impact of climate change and determines the thermal comfort and energy performance of a GB by comparing three future climate scenarios with present climate conditions. Hence, a university GB was simulated and calibrated with measured data. Then, to predict climate conditions in the 2050 s and 2090 s, several future weather files based on Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) were used. The results show a reduction in heating energy use and an increase in cooling, leading to a combined impact increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 17.8% (RCP 8.5). The overall energy use tends to remain almost constant through the different scenarios with a maximum predicted increase of 4% in GHG emissions. Similarly, the electricity production from the 625 m2 photovoltaic system in the GB slightly increases through the scenarios with an overall average of 2.17%. Finally, it is predicted that the case study GB maintains the required levels of thermal comfort over time given global warming.