Effect of New Urban Development on Heat-energy-carbon Emission in Hong Kong

Urbanization transforms natural landscapes into built environments with impervious surfaces and walled structures. Strategic planning of new development areas (NDAs) emerges and contributes additional urban heat through building heat absorption and air-conditioning (AC) operation inside the existing community, which intensifies the urban heat island effect in the surrounding and downwind districts. In this study, an atmospheric model (WRF) coupled with a building energy model was used to evaluate how NDAs’ development may contribute to temperature changes in the existing downwind residential community of Hong Kong. Our projection showed that NDA development would induce the downwind district temperature (i.e., Sheung Shui) by 1.2 degrees C, which triggered extra AC-related electricity usage by 64.2%. For mitigation strategies, our behaviour model illustrated up to 67% of energy and 0.06 ton-CO2-e per capita greenhouse gases could be reduced through occupant behavioural changes, which indicated the importance of how occupant behavioural intervention and advanced urban planning can better shape our future low-carbon cities.

 

Keywords: Urban heat; Building occupant behaviour; Spatiotemporal electricity usage; Low-carbon society; CMIP6 future climate projection