Large uncertainties in trends of energy demand for heating and cooling under climate change

The energy demand for heating and cooling buildings is changing with global warming. Using proxies of climate-driven energy demand based on the heating and cooling Degree-Days methodology applied to thirty global climate model simulations, we show that, over all continental areas, the climate-driven energy demand trends for heating and cooling were weak, changing by less than 10% from 1950 to 1990, but become stronger from 1990 to 2030, changing by more than 10%. With the multi-model mean, the increasing trends in cooling energy demand are more pronounced than the decreasing trends in heating. The changes in cooling, however, are highly variable depending on individual simulations, ranging from a few to several hundred percent in most of the densely populated mid-latitude areas. This work presents an example of the challenges that accompany future energy demand quantification as a result of the uncertainty in the projected climate. The energy demand for heating and cooling buildings is changing with global warming. Here the authors show that trends in cooling energy demands are increasing, although the magnitude is extremely uncertain, which highlights challenges for future energy demand quantification.