Predicted changes in energy demands for heating and cooling of passive house due to climate change in Slovenia

In the last 3 years in Slovenia we experienced extremely hot summers and demand for cooling the buildings had risen significantly. Since climate change scenarios predict higher temperatures for the whole country and for all seasons, we expect that energy demand for heating would decrease while demand for cooling would increase. An analysis for building with permitted energy demand for passive house wit heat and without heat gains in two typical urban climates in Slovenia was preformed. The transient simulation tool TRNSYS [1] was used for simulation of the indoor conditions and the energy use for heating and cooling. Climate change scenarios were presented inform of future (corrected) test reference years (CTRY). The time series of hourly data for all meteorological variables for different scenarios were chosen from actual measurements, using the method of highest likelihood. The climate change scenarios predicted temperature rise (+1 degrees C and +3 degrees C) and solar radiation increase (+3 % and +6 %). With the selection of these scenarios we covered the spectra of possible predicted climate changes in Slovenia. The results show that energy use for heating would decrease from 39 % to 84 % (depends on heating gains) in Subalpine region, while in Mediterranean region the rate of change would be from 7 % to 33 %. In the summer time and in case of house without heat gains the inner temperatures would not be greater then 26 degrees C. Otherwise when we considered heat gains the energy for cooling would increase to 8 times in Subalpine region and approximately for 7 % in Mediterranean region.