Energy retrofit of a day care center for current and future weather scenarios

Many scientific evidences have shown that Earth's climate is rapidly changing. By 2050, European Union is aiming to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the building sector. Achieving this target might help the mitigation of global warming, but the climate change seems inevitable. This means that both new and refurbished buildings should be able to face those conditions that they are going to experience during their lifetime. Therefore, any building design should be checked both for current and future climate scenarios. This study describes the use of a downscaling method named morphing to generate future weather scenarios and intends to support the design process of a deep energy retrofit of a day care center in order to improve the energy and thermal comfort performance of the building under the current and future weather scenarios. The retrofit concept of the building also includes hybrid ventilation, automated solar shading, lighting controls and renewable energy generation systems. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.