Urban building energy modeling

This chapter reviews emerging simulation methods and implementation workflows for bottom-up urban building energy models. It discusses simulation input organization, thermal model generation and execution, as well as result validation. Energy efficiency incentive programs have been around since the 1970s. They have the goal of providing focused financial support for building owners to retrofit a building in order to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions and operational costs. The chapter shows that significant progress has been made towards the development of simulation workflows to estimate overall operational building energy use of neighborhoods. In order for urban building energy models to have the larger societal impact that was proposed in the introduction, stronger intellectual engagement between planners, policymakers, utility representatives and the building modeling community is necessary. Cities are complicated organizations, and consequential urban changes undergo a lengthy consultation process that involves many stakeholders.