PNNL

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) could have significant impact on building energy consumption by increasing space cooling demand and decreasing space heating demand. However, the impact of UHI on building energy use was understudied due to challenges associated with defining UHI-induced temperature change and evaluating building energy use. In this paper, we reviewed the existing literature to understand the quantitative impact of UHI on building energy, which is represented by the difference in energy consumption of a representative building in urban and rural areas. The previous studies found that UHI could result in a median increase of 19.0% in cooling energy consumption and a median decrease of 18.7% in heating energy consumption. Moreover, the reported UHI impact showed strong spatial variation within and among cities; the impact on cooling energy use ranges between 10% and 120% while the impact on heating ranges between 3% and 45%. Building on the previous studies, the future research could extend the study of UHI impact in four ways: 1) exploring the spatial pattern of the UHI impact within a city by considering the intra-city variation of UHI intensity and building characteristics; 2) investigating the inter-city variation of the UHI impact and the influence of different characteristics such as geographical location, city size, and development stage; 3) expanding studies in developing countries where rapid urbanization is expected in the next few decades; and 4) projecting UHI impact with future patterns of urbanization and climate change.