Potentials for Adapting Danish Sustainable Houses to Climate Change: Simulation Study on the Effects of Climate Change in Low-Rise Sustainable Houses

Abstract

Climate change is a threat. Houses we inhabit should conform to changes in the environment. The housing sector is vulnerable to climate changes, since the inhabitants are more exposed than in commercial buildings. Studies find modern sustainable buildings are at risk from thermal changes due to lower resilience from a focus on energy savings. Through simulation studies of three sustainable houses in Denmark, their viability to climate change is tested. Four thermal adaptation strategies were simulated: defensive, reactive, embedded, and air conditioning. The operative temperature and energy use for heating is registered for occupancy rooms in the buildings. The simulations show a tendency that adaptation through passive means use the same or up to 5% less energy as the unmodified buildings in the simulations but are unable to uphold thermal comfort, where active technologies use 25%–260% more energy than the baseline in 2080. Reactive strategies provided best thermal comfort in most rooms and scenarios, balancing energy and thermal environment. Air conditioning removed most thermal discomfort but increased the energy use with 45%–260% by 2080. The recommendation would be to enable upscaling of mechanical ventilation by a factor of two over the minimum regulation of 0.3 l/s/m2 with the ability to bypass heat recovery, aided by passive solutions such as strategic planting of deciduous trees and solar shading to reduce energy use further.