Empirical evidence on the impact of urban overheating on building cooling and heating energy consumption

A primary contributor to urban overheating is the urban heat island (UHI) formed due to increased urbanization. The adverse effects of UHI on building energy use are substantial and well documented. However, such effects are typically demonstrated through numerical simulations which are susceptible to modeling uncertainties and lack of validation resulting in a pressing research gap. Here, for the first time, we conduct a large-scale assessment to demonstrate the devastating impact of UHI on building energy consumption using real building energy use data. We find empirical evidence correlating UHI with building energy use; changes in average UHI intensity of 0.5 K correspond to an increase in monthly cooling energy consumption in a range of 0.17 kWh/m(2)–1.84 kWh/m(2). The study validates theoretical evidence on the impact of UHI on building energy and proposes a highly innovative methodology to assess the impact of overheating on the energy balance of cities.