Future energy demand for public buildings in the context of climate change for Burkina Faso

This paper addresses the dual challenge faced by Burkina Faso engineers to design sustainable low-energy public buildings while still providing the required thermal comfort under warmer temperature conditions caused by climate change. In this article, we discuss current and potential future energy demand for public buildings air conditioning in the context of climate change. Past and projected future trends of electricity demand for air conditioning in public buildings from 2010 to 2080 have been investigated. Moreover, this paper highlights the fact that the predicted mean temperature using climate change SRES scenario B2 will increase by about 2 degrees C by 2050 which can cause a significant increase in air conditioning energy consumption. This paper then considers the impact of different shading devises and building envelopes characteristics on the demand for air-conditioning in Burkina Faso public buildings. It is estimated that with climate change, in order to maintain a thermally comfortable 25 degrees C inside public buildings, the projected annual energy consumption will have to increase by 56% and 99% respectively for the period between 2030 to 2049 and 2060 to 2079 compared to the base situation (energy consumption between 2010 and 2029). Moreover, the results have shown that shading devices could reduce the cooling load by up to 40%. Therefore shading devices could play a significant role in climate change adaptation in the built environment for Burkina Faso. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.