Stock modeling and building morphology: a case study of Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Commercial buildings in Brazil consume approximately 16% of electricity energy use nationwide. The goal of this study is to explore and model the relationship of land use regulation, high-rise commercial building morphology and their energy use intensity in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The database from the local city council was used to identify and map the high-rise commercial building stock combined with a field survey which investigated prevalent commercial building typologies in the city. Data from this field survey was used to build representative energy models of the high-rise commercial buildings for building performance simulation. The tool selected to evaluate building energy performance of the representative model was EnergyPlus, DaySim was used for dynamic daylighting analysis. The simulation results demonstrate how vertical development and a building morphology produced by land use code affect air conditioning energy use intensity and access to daylight in these representative building models.