Effectiveness of Passive Adaptation Measures Against Climate Change for Building Thermal Performance

Abstract

Due to the climate changes over the past few years, the outdoor atmosphere has drastically changed. In accordance to that, already existing as well as the new buildings being built need some adaptation in order to provide comfortable living for the tenants. Climate change widely impacts the atmospheric parameters hence the energy efficiency of the building envelope. South Asian countries have been impacted a lot by rise of temperature and heat waves in accordance with the climate change over the period. Passive climate change adaptation measures (PCAMs) are useful coping with the discussed issue. They are useful in providing healthy indoor environment, with a minimum or preferably no increase in energy consumption and also to reduce the Green House gas emissions. In this study, six passive climate change adaptation measures (PCAMs) have been used and their results have been analyzed regarding the energy efficiency on two types of building envelope (i) single flat (ii) Full floor flat design containing four flats on the floor. Increase in thermal resistance, green Wall and solar shading were found to be the most efficient (PCMs) to reduce the building energy in accordance with the weather conditions of Pakistan. By implementation of these PCAMs, cooling demand can be decreased by 12% for the apartment building.