Modeling the effect of climate change on U.S. state-level buildings energy demands in an integrated assessment framework
As long-term socioeconomic transformation and energy service expansion show large spatial heterogeneity, advanced understanding of climate impact on building energy use at the sub-national level will offer useful insights into climate policy and regional energy system planning. In this study, we presented a detailed building energy model with a U.S. state-level representation, nested in the GCAM integrated assessment framework. We projected state-level building energy demand and its spatial pattern over the century, considering the impact of climate change based on the estimates of heating and cooling degree days derived from downscaled USGS CASCaDE temperature data. The result indicates that climate change has a large impact on heating and cooling building energy and fuel use at the state level, exhibiting large spatial heterogeneity across states (ranges from -10% to +10%). The sensitivity analysis reveals that the building energy demand is subject to multiple key factors, such as the magnitude of climate change, the choice of climate models, and the growth of population and GDP, and that their relative contributions vary greatly across the space. The scale impact in building energy use modeling highlights the importance of constructing a building energy model with the spatially-explicit representation of socioeconomics, energy system development, and climate change. These findings will help the climate-based policy decision and energy system, especially utility planning related to building sector at the U.S. state and regional level facing the potential climate change.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1123237
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-94232
- Journal Information:
- Applied Energy, 113:1077-1088, Journal Name: Applied Energy, 113:1077-1088
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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