Future climate data for energy modeling — how could it benefit you?

Our research team is passionate about solutions that inspire responsible energy use and research that advances energy systems. It is important to us to make our tools and information readily available to building designers and facility staff since they can change the way impactful decisions are made. That’s why we developed the only FREE climate data toolkit. This will benefit energy modelers for building design and retrofit as well utility efficiency program and policy planning.

Building energy modeling is a very prevalent tool for assessing the impact of energy efficiency upgrades on new and existing buildings. However, these models currently use historical climate data. Climate change models predict the climate in a given location will be different from this historical data. Accurately assessing the impact of energy efficiency upgrades requires use of forward-looking datasets, informed by climate change models. That’s where our tool comes in. 

We know that buildings will perform very differently throughout the buildings’ operational life (decades long) due to the changing climate alone. Now, energy modelers have access to a tool that provides future climate data files to use within simulations that quantifies the energy impacts of climate change on building energy performance. This tool allows building designers and facility staff to evaluate upgrades under the climate that the measures will actually operate in.

Intrigued? Download the free climate data toolkit and check out our methodology for creating this tool. There is a wide range of future climate datasets. Selecting the most applicable one is challenging and requires further effort. But, that’s why we are here. Contact me with questions or requests for further information.