Assessing the cooling performance of tropical dwellings using multi-year future climate scenario EnergyPlus weather files: a case study of Brunei Darussalam

As climate change continues to impact the world, assessing building cooling performance under potential future climate scenarios is crucial, particularly in hot and humid all year-round tropical regions where occupant overheating and cooling system failures pose significant risks throughout the year. Despite extensive research on building performance under future climates, year-on-year assessments have been largely overlooked, limiting our ability to capture the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather events. This paper presents an innovative method for generating EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) files from 2015 to 2100 under different emission scenarios using the latest climate models. The generated weather files are simulated on a residential building located in tropical Brunei Darussalam. Results show that cooling energy consumption of existing tropical dwellings could increase by 225% by the year 2100 and using multiyear future EPW files can provide more clarity in estimating future energy consumption, based on the trends and variability in weather according to different scenarios. This study lays the groundwork for future year-on-year assessments of building energy performance under potential climate scenarios.