Abstract

To be sustainable, buildings should usefully last for many generations. This requires building designers to have some knowledge of the future climate and the resources available to maintain the operations, in particular energy consumption, of buildings.The New Zealand climate is predicted to get hotter and an energy gap to emerge as fossil fuels deplete and hydroelectricity production declines due to the retreat of glaciers.The historical peak demand of electricity for buildings has been for winter heating.This is now shifting to summer cooling. Building design should be responding by designing with climate rather than against it. Appropriate consideration of solar shading, thermal mass and natural ventilation systems can provide comfort conditions within buildings with the minimum use of energy. However, the trend in New Zealand has been for commercial buildings to be designed without consideration to excessive solar heat gains resulting in lightweight, highly glazed built forms that are dependent on air-conditioning. This is typical of almost all the buildings that have been accredited with the New Zealand GreenStar ratings. This paper will review those aspects of Climate Change and fuel depletion that will have an impact on buildings both in the short and longer term. In particular the predicted average temperature increases and the impact this will have on energy demand for air-conditioning.The paper will also analyse the science behind these highly glazed building types and explain why, both in New Zealand and internationally, their monitored energy consumption significantly exceeds the predicted consumption at the design stage.The paper will argue that both building design and standards should change to allow adaptation to a hotter climate where dependence on mechanical cooling systems should be avoided due to an insecure supply of energy in the longer term. Building design needs to address the problem of overheating by passive means and comfort standards altered to account for human adaptation.