EGU21-13503
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13503
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Using an Urban Building Energy Modelling Towards a Carbon-Neutral Neighbourhood: A case study of Dublin Ireland

Niall Buckley1, Gerald Mill s1, and Christoph Reinhart2
Niall Buckley et al.
  • 1Geography, UCD, Dublin, Ireland (niall.buckley1@ucdconnect.ie)
  • 2School of Architecture + Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, tito_@mit.edu

The EU’s Green Deal has a goal of a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. Achieving this goal will require a comprehensive set of actions across all economic sectors, especially the building sector, which currently accounts for 40% of the energy consumed.  Residential energy use is a significant contributor, much of it due to the poorly insulated building stock. Making a ‘just transition’ to more energy-efficient cities requires a spatial approach that can address the correspondence of poor housing and people and the potential for energy innovation at a neighbourhood-scale. In this study, a geographic database of building archetypes is developed for use by the Urban Modelling Interface (Umi) to perform simulations of urban energy use intensity and test the efficacy of energy policies. Umi is applied to a neighbourhood of residential buildings in Dublin (Ireland), many of which perform poorly. Simulated annual energy use intensity is evaluated favourably using energy performance certificate data. Umi is used subsequently to design and test the efficacy of district-level energy policies; the results indicate that the most cost-effective mix of envelope retrofit and onsite energy production to achieve the Green Deal’s target of 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2050. The methodology shown here employs data and software that is publicly available for many EU countries.

How to cite: Buckley, N., Mill s, G., and Reinhart, C.: Using an Urban Building Energy Modelling Towards a Carbon-Neutral Neighbourhood: A case study of Dublin Ireland, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13503, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13503, 2021.