Building Energy Use Modeling at the U.S. State Level Under Climate Change

Climate change plays an important role in building energy use for heating and cooling. As global building energy use accounts for as much as about 32% of global final energy consumption in 2005, the impact of climate change on greenhouse gas emissions may also be significant. 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 regional energy system planning. In this study, we have developed a detailed building energy model with U.S. 50-state representation, embedded in an integrated assessment framework (Global Change Assessment Model). The climate change impact on heating and cooling demand is measured through estimating heating and cooling degree days (HDD/CDDs) derived from MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) climate data and linking the estimates to the building energy model. Having the model calibrated against historical data at the U.S. state level, we estimated the building energy use in the 21st century at the U.S. state level and analyzed its spatial pattern. We have found that the total building energy use (heating and cooling) in U.S. states is over- or under-estimated without having climate feedback taken into account, and that the difference with and without climate feedback at the state level varies from -25% to 25% in reference scenario and -15% to 10% in climate mitigation scenario. The result not only confirms earlier finding that global warming leads to increased cooling and decreased heating energy use, it also indicates that climate change has a different impact on total building energy use at national and state level, exhibiting large spatial heterogeneity across states (Figure 1). The scale impact in building energy use modeling emphasizes the importance of developing a building energy model that represents socioeconomic development, energy service expansion, and their interaction with climate change in a spatially explicit manner. The sensitivity analysis suggests that the impact of climate change on building energy use is influenced by a number of key drivers, such as climate policy, technology, population, GDP, and climate models. The findings from this study will help inform the climate-based policy decision at U.S. state and regional level.;