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ABSTRACT: During the last decades, the effects of global warming have become apparent also in Europe, causing relevant impacts in many sectors. Under projected future global warming, such a tendency can be expected to persist until the end of this century and beyond. Identifying which climate‐related impacts are likely to increase, and by how much, is an important element of any effective strategy for managing future climate risks. This study investigates whether energy demand for cooling and heating buildings can be expected to increase or decrease under climate change. Two indicators of weather‐related energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings are considered: heating degree‐days (HDD) and cooling degree‐days (CDD). The evolution of these indicators has been analysed based on 11 high‐resolution bias‐adjusted EURO‐CORDEX simulations for two emission representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Both indicators have been validated over the period 1981–2010 using an independent data set that contains more than 4000 station data, showing very high correlation over most of Europe. Trends of HDD and CDD from 1981 to 2100, together with their uncertainties, are analysed. For both RCPs, all simulations project a significant decrease for HDD, especially over Scandinavia and European Russia, and an increase of CDD which peaks over the Mediterranean region and the Balkans. Overall, degree‐day trends do not show remarkable differences if population weighting is applied. If a constant population scenario is considered, the decrease in HDD will outbalance the increase in CDD in the 21st century over most of Europe. Thus the related energy demand (expressed as Energy Degree‐days, EDD) is expected to decrease. If, however, population projections over the 21st century are included in the calculations, it is shown that despite the persisting warming, EDD will increase over northern Europe, the Baltic countries, Great Britain, Ireland, Benelux, the Alps, Spain, and Cyprus, resulting in an overall increase in EDD over Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Due to its high thermal performance, ground source heat pump systems (GSHPs) have been introduced as an alternative to reduce energy consumption of heating and cooling systems. The thermal performance of GSHPs strongly depends on ground temperature and energy demand for heating and cooling during the year. Certainly, increasing the global temperature means warmer ground. On the other hand, the thermal load of a building is influenced by thermal quality of building envelop (TQBE) and also influenced by the ambient air temperature. There is absolutely no doubt that the global temperature has increased during the last century. Over time, the buildings designs are changing. These result in changed thermal load of the buildings, ground temperature, and thereby changed the thermal performance of GSHPs. The objective of current work was to investigate the impact of TQBE under different global warming scenarios on driving energy and construction cost of GSHPs in Vienna. This was achieved by comparing the driving energy of the GSHP as well the required total length of the borehole heat exchanger for different GW scenarios and different TQBE. Under climate conditions of Vienna city study shows that improving the TQBE and increasing ambient air temperature result in reduced driving energy of GSHP. While is it not obvious for the required total borehole depth. Namely, after a certain degree of GW, increasing TQBE might result in increased required borehole depth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]