Climate change implications for environmental performance of residential building energy use: the case of Qatar

Building energy demands in the future could increase due to the climate change driven increase in outdoor temperatures. Gulf countries characterized by extreme climate and dependency on fossil fuels would be especially vulnerable to such impacts. Considering that in such countries about 80% of energy produced is used for cooling services, an increase in cooling demand would affect both building environmental impact and grid stability. The main scope of this study is to quantify such implications by considering the residential sector of Qatar as a case study. A representative building of the national building stock was selected, and energy consumption was modelled for present and forecasted weather conditions. The results indicated that in the future, heat waves will occur more frequently, with a higher intensity and a longer duration. Consequently, building energy consumption will increase for up to 30%. Such increase in energy demand would result in higher CO2 emissions, water and fossil fuel depletion rates, as well as increased impact on already strained local marine ecosystem. In order to mitigate such impacts, New regional environmental policies should be developed for large-scale renovation of the existing building stock and installation of renewable energy systems in order to mitigate the environmental impacts.