ASHRAE Journal - September 2014 - 36

TECHNICAL FEATURE

Future Climate Impacts
On Building Design
BY SCOTT SCHUETTER, P.E., MEMBER ASHRAE; LEE DEBAILLIE, P.E., MEMBER ASHRAE; AND DOUG AHL, PH.D.

The climate is changing as evidenced by ASHRAE Research Project 1453, which
recently updated the climate zones and design conditions in ANSI/ASHRAE Standard
169-2013, Climate Data for Building Design Standards.1 How will the changing climate
impact building design and operation? For instance, is more cooling or heating
capacity needed? What energy conservation technologies will be most effective in the
future? At present, there are no standardized methods for estimating future climate
impacts to building systems.
In this article, we discuss an initial effort that uses
a building energy modeling framework to examine
the impacts of future climate variability on the energy
consumption, peak energy demand and energy costs at
NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) in southern
Mississippi. We additionally look at adaptation strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change on building
energy performance.

Facility Characteristics
We began by collecting building and energy data from
SSC for 2011. We found that the building stock at SSC
is very diverse in size, age, and function, reflecting the
unique scientific nature of the facility and the range of
both public and private tenants. The total SSC campus
includes 2.9 million gross ft2 (275 697 gross m2) of facilities.
In 2011, the SSC campus consumed 99 million kWh of
electricity and 1.5 million therms of natural gas. In terms

of source energy, natural gas represents 7.5% of campus
energy consumption. Generally speaking, the SSC campus consumes just over double the national building
average consumption per unit floor area. This reflects
the industrial and research nature of the space center
and the presence of a number of large data centers. Table
1 compares SSC campus energy to national averages.
We also collected one-hour electric interval data for
the SSC campus from the local electric utility for calendar year 2011. Similar interval data for natural gas
consumption was not available. Figure 1 illustrates that
below approximately 60°F (16°C), the electric demand is
fairly constant, showing little climate dependence. This
confirms that the majority of SSC's heating comes from
natural gas. Above approximately 60°F (16°C), the electric
demand increases rapidly as the cooling equipment and
associated pumps and fans come online to cool the spaces.
Figure 1 also shows that while the electric load profile

Scott Schuetter, P.E., is a senior energy engineer, Lee DeBaillie, P.E., is a principal energy engineer and a member of the ASHRAE Standards Project Committee 209 for Energy Simulation Aided
Design for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, and Doug Ahl, Ph.D., is the director of Building Systems and Technology Research at the Energy Center of Wisconsin in Madison.
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ASHRAE Journal - September 2014

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