High Performance Architecture research cluster

Regional climate change in cities is the most documented phenomenon of climate change. Higher urban temperatures are documented experimentally for more than 450 major cities in the world. Numerous investigations demonstrate that the mean magnitude of the temperature increase may exceed 4-6°C, while at the peak it may exceed 10°C. The serious increase of the frequency and the strength of heat waves creates strong synergies between the global and regional climate change and intensifies the magnitude of the overheating.

In Australia, it is expected that Sydney and Melbourne will have 50°C+ summer days in the near future, with Western Sydney already reaching 48.9°C in January 2020. Urban overheating can cause a serious impact both on the energy demand and generation sectors. It increases the cooling energy consumption of buildings, rises the peak electricity demand, and obliges utilities to build additional power plants. It seriously affects health issues, particularly heat related mortality and morbidity, impacts the concentration of pollutants and damages the urban environmental quality, and finally deteriorates the levels of local vulnerability and thermal comfort. To counterbalance the problem of urban overheating, developing mitigation policies, appropriate intervention strategies and technologies become an urgent task.

The climate emergency is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have already raised the earth’s average temperature around 1.1°C when compared to the pre-industrial era. This has increased the severity and frequency of extreme weather events which are having a catastrophic impact on people and communities. The latest IPCC Reports therefore point towards urgent action and achieving significant gains in net zero carbon by 2030.

Built environment is a key candidate for both levels of carbon emissions and opportunities for innovations. These include advanced, researched knowledge, emerging technologies and practical applications that enable to deliver change towards net zero carbon 2030. The High Performance Architecture (HPA) team has recently completed the Australian Guide for Net Zero Carbon Buildings 2030 and an accompanying book is due later this year. These build on long term research and innovation at UNSW’s School of Built Environment. The HPA research cluster can claim world class team and research to impact in this area. It has leadership of:

• CRC for Low Carbon Living: 2012-2019
• NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub
• Australian Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy

Buildings contribute to environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions across their entire lifecycle – from the extraction of the raw materials needed to create them, to their operation, to their eventual decommissioning and demolition. Historically we’ve focussed only on improving building performance, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in the ‘operational phase’ of a building’s life. However, there is robust evidence that the emissions caused by materials, construction, maintenance and demolition have a significant and adverse effect on the environment. These emissions are known as ‘embodied carbon’. In a typical building today, embodied carbon can be responsible for more than half of the total greenhouse gas emissions a building will release across its lifecycle.

Population growth, energy poverty, liveability, and climate change are major challenges cities will face in the future. Rapid population growth in cities has increased pressure on the environment, resource use and infrastructure through natural habitat loss, increased consumption of energy, water and materials, and urban sprawl. Energy poverty is also an important issue in cities as many people with low incomes are unable to access energy services, which can be a seriously detriment to their health and wellbeing. Climate change will also continue to make a significant impact on cities’ services, ecosystems and human health. Effectively responding to this requires new thinking, approaches and technologies to deliver better solutions that can enable the restoration of ecosystems, the transition towards low carbon living, the acceleration of sustainable, resilient and smart cities, and the creation of positive impacts on the environment, society and economy.

In addition to the capability in strategic studies and local climate modelling, our research group has a strong experimental background, with the full capacity to assess the future implementation and the mitigation performance in the area under consideration. This is demonstrated by the relevant experience that includes both numerical modelling and experimental activity, and by the equipment available to our lab.