Energy Buildings and Urban Environment

Energy and climate are inextricably linked at scales ranging from individual building to global. At the building scale, energy consumption consists of a base load and a space conditioning load that depend on weather conditions. Energy consumed in buildings is ultimately converted to waste heat. Anthropogenic heat released from buildings affects the urban climate system and produces a feedback on building energy consumption for space conditioning - positive feedback in summer, negative feedback in winter. These interconnections further interact with climate and the growing stresses on our available supplies of energy. This chapter studies these interactions.