Quantifying CO₂ Emissions and Energy Production from Power Plants to Run HVAC Systems in ASHRAE-Based Buildings

Recent evidence available in the literature has highlighted that the high-energy consumption rate associated with air conditioning leads to the undesired “overcooling” condition in arid-climate regions. To this end, this study quantified the effects of increasing the cooling setpoint temperature on reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions to mitigate overcooling. DesignBuilder software was used to simulate the performance of a generic building operating under the currently adopted ASHRAE HVAC criteria. It was found that increasing the cooling setpoint temperature by 1 °C will increase the operative temperature by approximately 0.25 °C and reduce the annual cooling electricity consumption required for each 1 m² of an occupied area by approximately 8 kWh/year. This accounts for a reduction of 8% in cooling energy consumption compared to the ASHRAE cooling setpoint (i.e., t_s = 26 °C) and a reduction in the annual CO₂ emission rate to roughly 4.8 kg/m² °C. The largest reduction in cooling energy consumption and CO₂ emissions was found to occur in October, with reduced rates of approximately–1.3 kWh/m² °C and −0.8 kg/m² °C, respectively.

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Published in: Energies
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en15238813