Modeling climate-driven changes in U.S. buildings energy demand

Brown, Marilyn A.; Cox, Matt; Staver, Ben; Baer, Paul E.

doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1527-7

Cited by 36 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…For this analysis, it is assumed that all space cooling services in the model are used to mitigate heat stress and so the total cooling demand is the sum of the cooling required to mitigate each heat stress level. As described by Brown et al (2016), the relationship between temperature and cooling demand may be represented by different functions depending on factors including building properties, diffusion of cooling technologies and cultural preferences. Following the method of Labriet et al (2015), this study assumes that the usage of cooling appliances changes but the diffusion of appliances does not change as a response to climate change.…”

Section: Energy Demand For High Stress Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change in Africa: costs of mitigating heat stress

et al. 2019

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We applied two metrics, apparent temperature and humidex, to calculate heat stress in both present and future climates. We use an ensemble of CORDEX-Africa simulations to estimate heat stress during a baseline period and at two specific warming levels, 2 and 4 • C above pre-industrial. The increase in temperatures and changes to the precipitation distribution under climate change are projected to increase the intensity of heat stress events in Sahelian Africa and introduce new heat stress events in Northern and Central Africa. As the intensity of heat stress increases, it is expected that the use of energy-intensive cooling will increase. The energy system, therefore, will need to be able to supply more energy to power fans or air conditioning units. The cooling demand to turn a heat stress event into a nonheat stress event is computed. This value is then weighted by the population to find the total cooling required to prevent heat stress across the continent. Country-level results indicate that the greatest increases in cooling demand will occur in countries with densely populated regions, most notably Nigeria. Supplying this additional cooling demand will present the greatest challenge to less developed countries like Somalia. We find the least-cost future energy system that meets the projected increase in demand and derive the increase in energy system costs with the TIAM-UCL model.

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Section: Energy Demand For High Stress Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change in Africa: costs of mitigating heat stress

et al. 2019

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“…We acknowledge that in building literature there are studies that use a piecewise linear function to identify cooling and heating turn on points (often referred to as balance points) 45 , 46 , 65 – 67 . We use the quadratic function over the piecewise linear function due to higher R 2 values, which is consistent with other studies 68 (see Supplementary Information Note 12 for more discussion).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unveiling hidden energy poverty using the energy equity gap

et al. 2022

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Income-based energy poverty metrics ignore people’s behavior patterns, particularly reducing energy consumption to limit financial stress. We investigate energy-limiting behavior in low-income households using a residential electricity consumption dataset. We first determine the outdoor temperature at which households start using cooling systems, the inflection temperature. Our relative energy poverty metric, the energy equity gap, is defined as the difference in the inflection temperatures between low and high-income groups. In our study region, we estimate the energy equity gap to be between 4.7–7.5 °F (2.6–4.2 °C). Within a sample of 4577 households, we found 86 energy-poor and 214 energy-insecure households. In contrast, the income-based energy poverty metric, energy burden (10% threshold), identified 141 households as energy-insecure. Only three households overlap between our energy equity gap and the income-based measure. Thus, the energy equity gap reveals a hidden but complementary aspect of energy poverty and insecurity.

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“…There are different de‐trending approaches proposed in the literature (Bessec & Fouquau, 2008). The method used in this study (Sailor & Muñoz, 1997) is one the most widely used approaches in the climate‐energy research literature and its effectiveness has been extensively documented (Alipour et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2016; Khoshbakht et al., 2018; Mukherjee & Nateghi, 2017a; Parkinson & Djilali, 2015; Santágata et al., 2017). The de‐trending process involves the following steps:

E(y)=\frac{{\sum }_{y=1}^{{n}_{years}}{\sum }_{m=1}^{12}E(m,y)}{{n}_{years}}

Where the total years, n years , range from 1990–2016; m denotes the month and y denotes the year.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Goldilocks Zone in Cooling Demand: What Can We Do Better?

2022

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The higher frequency and intensity of sustained heat events have increased the demand for cooling energy across the globe. Current estimates of summer‐time energy demand are primarily based on Cooling Degree Days (CDD), representing the number of degrees a day's average temperature exceeds a predetermined comfort zone temperature. Through a comprehensive analysis of the historical energy demand data across the USA, we show that the commonly used CDD estimates fall significantly short (±25%) of capturing regional thermal comfort levels. Moreover, given the increasingly compelling evidence that air temperature alone is not sufficient for characterizing human thermal comfort, we extend the widely used CDD calculation to heat index, which accounts for both air temperature and humidity. Our results indicate significant mis‐estimation of regional thermal comfort when humidity is ignored. Our findings have significant implications for the security, sustainability, and resilience of the grid under climate change.

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Modeling climate-driven changes in U.S. buildings energy demand

Cited by 36 publications

References 33 publications

Climate change in Africa: costs of mitigating heat stress

Climate change in Africa: costs of mitigating heat stress

Unveiling hidden energy poverty using the energy equity gap

The Goldilocks Zone in Cooling Demand: What Can We Do Better?

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