The Köppen climate classification system defines cold regions as areas where the mean temperature in the coldest month is no greater than 27 °F (-3 °C) and no more than 4 months have a monthly mean temperature higher than 50 °F (10 °C). They include two groups: D (Continental) with cold winters and warm summers and E (Polar) (IES 2021). The U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) defines climate zones based on various factors such as heating degree-days, average temperatures, and precipitation; these definitions are used by International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and ASHRAE standards. By this classification cold regions belong to climate zones 6 through 8 (IES 2021). These cold regions cover almost 20% of the earth’s total land (excluding Antarctica and Greenland). The main communities in these regions include indigenous people, military installations and remote bases, customs and border protection stations, construction and industrial camps, research centres, government, and community services etc. Greater areas can be affected depending on the ability of populations to survive/adapt over the duration of an event. Also, the increase in activities in these areas for tourism and economic development increases the risk profile. Except for Antarctica, the cold climate zones are mostly situated in the northern hemisphere due to the distribution of landmass. The logistics of construction, repair, and maintenance in such remote locations are unique and can be daunting. For example, many remote locations may have no paved roads and can be accessed only by rail or air, or by barges that deliver materials and fuel in the summer months; the rest of the year those locations are accessible only by airplane, helicopter, snowmobile, or not at all. Even in locations normally accessible by road and airplane, extreme weather events (winter storms and avalanches) can make these locations inaccessible for days at a time. In some areas, ice roads are constructed annually to move materials and equipment during the winter to remote communities and industrial areas.

For people to survive in the cold, buildings MUST BE warm and comfortable in normal operations and habitable in a crisis. Very cold outside air temperatures drive building design for cold climates. Extreme cold outdoor temperatures create low relative humidity inside buildings. In addition to very cold temperatures, strong wind, wind driven rain, frozen and freezing precipitation are among other building design drivers in subarctic and arctic regions. Local snow depth and potential snow drifting should determine the structural building design. Permafrost is another common feature that must be considered when a building is located in subarctic and arctic zones. Due to the current climate warming trend, permafrost temperatures are rising in circumpolar nations. Consequently, increases in damaged infrastructure due to the rising temperatures are now becoming a problem for some locations. Resilience of buildings, mechanical systems, and energy supply systems in cold climates is especially important. 

The objective of the proposed Annex is to develop technical, economic, environmental, policy, and societal frameworks that will result in the development of Guidelines for improving the resilience of the buildings and building communities located in cold and very cold climates through an international research and development project. The project will also consider the interdependent and interconnecting essential services, logistics, and supply chains for materials and services that enable and maintain the resilient critical functioning of buildings and their occupants.

To further support these two aspects and to achieve a holistic understanding and approach to achieving the annex objectives, the project will focus on the human element, the people necessary to achieve the required resilience. This will include consideration of such aspects of human resilience as physiology but will also examine cold climate remote location decision-making and other behaviours during both normal operations and crises. This project will also consider the role and criticality of governance and other key guidelines that influence decision making and other behaviours that inform such essential mechanisms such as emergency planning, preparedness and recovery, crisis response, and business continuity and contingency planning. The project will establish in-depth definitions, indicators, and a framework for energy resilience in the context of energy systems architectures. The concepts to be presented in the Guidelines will be illustrated by examples of best practices from participating countries. 

The project is proposed within the framework of the International Energy Agency (IEA) TCP on Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC). Thermal energy systems’ resilience is especially important in extreme climates. While metrics and requirements for availability, reliability, and quality of power systems have been established, similar metrics and requirements for thermal energy systems are not well understood despite the clear need for such metrics in the earth’s cold regions. A few research projects have been carried out to address the resilience of buildings in warm, hot, and humid climatic conditions due to the higher population and local challenges (economy). However, in cold climate conditions, the resilience issue has not been addressed extensively. The definition of technical, economic, and social frameworks, and the development of guidelines to increase the overall energy resilience of buildings and building communities are critical for many stakeholders. The results of this Annex will be based on research, development, and best practices available from participating countries collected at the time of preparing the proposal (listed in the Appendix) and further activities planned as a part of the proposed Annex project. This Annex is intended to support a broad community of relevant public policy and decision makers, planners, architects, and engineers.

Scope and Objectives

Background and State of the Art

To be able to provide a design that is robust, adaptable, and financially viable, it is important to understand the aspects of the building or the buildings’ cluster location that will impact equipment selections, operating hours, and maintenance needs. Another consideration is the building’s ability to withstand a heating plant outage, either locally or from a centralized source. This project defines the term ‘resilience’ as the ability of a building to withstand an interruption of its energy systems during cold outdoor ambient conditions and the ability of the surrounding energy system to ensure a secure electricity and heat supply. Buildings with a fast rate of temperature decline during heating system loss have lower resilience; buildings with a slower rate of temperature degradation have higher resilience. 

During normal and emergency operations buildings and their energy systems must maintain certain thermal and moisture parameters (air temperature, and humidity content) to achieve one or several purposes: 

• provide a healthy and comfortable environment to perform the required work in a building safely and efficiently (well-being in normal conditions and habitability during emergencies)
• support processes housed in the building.
• provide conditions required for the long-term integrity of the building and building materials, to prevent systems from freezing and Mold growth (building sustainability).

Occupant discomfort reduces their ability to work. Low indoor air temperatures affect occupants’ ability to think and observe optimally by decreasing the ability to concentrate, which increases the risk of mistakes and accidents. In cold regions, 10% relative humidity is not uncommon in buildings that are not humidified due to the low moisture content of the outdoor air. Low humidity can create human health problems like increased spread of bacteria and viruses, respiratory infection, allergic rhinitis, and asthma (Sterling et al. 1985). Low humidity also creates excess static electricity, which is dangerous to sensitive electronics. Thermal comfort for normal building operation is defined by ASHRAE Standard 55, Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy (ASHRAE 2020). Process-related criteria for the thermal environment needed to perform the activity housed in the building are available from different industry-specific publications, e.g., ASHRAE 2009, NAFPA 2018, ACGIH.

The first attempt to define requirements and provide recommendations on thermal and moisture parameters in different types of buildings under emergency operation in cold/arctic climates was made by researchers from the United States based on a limited analysis published by Zhivov et al. (2021b) and ASHRAE (2021). These documents also provide recommendations for scenarios under normal operating conditions: occupied, temporarily unoccupied, and long-term unoccupied. The Annex research team will include experts in indoor environments from participating countries. In cold climates, resilience plays an integral role in protecting property during an outage. Drops in indoor temperature can pose a freezing risk to plumbing and wet sprinkler piping. Freezing pipes can burst and cause costly interior flooding. Pipe breaks due to freezing conditions are common in cold regions in both commercial and residential contexts. Flooding in commercial buildings can cause enormous damage that can be very expensive to repair. In addition, flooding can also
lead to the loss of workspace, which affects productivity and which is difficult to replace in resource-limited cold regions.

Therefore, it is necessary not only to examine building heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) installations but also the building envelope and the whole energy infrastructure. A more resilient low-carbon system can be achieved by taking advantage of the large thermal capacity of concrete and brick walls, which have a high mass and are therefore (when well insulated), beneficial for thermal resilience. However, the production of cement results in significant CO2 emissions. Integration in the building envelope structure of more advanced materials like PCMs (phase-changing materials) could offer similar energy storage effects but with lower CO2 emissions. 

Delivering building materials for new construction to remote locations is a logistically challenging, costly, and fuel intensive activity. To ensure sustainable development in cold remote areas, renovation of existing buildings must be considered. Although additional exterior insulation can improve R-values is often seen as a simple way to enhance energy resilience, it is important to analyse the typical building construction and technologies used in the existing building stock before determining methods for energy-resilient renovations. Exterior insulation retrofits in cold climates can reduce the durability of the building and the indoor air quality if not planned with an understanding of the climate. 

The concept of modular buildings, including tiny houses, may reduce the CO2 footprint per person, but local cultures play an important role in the selection of building archetypes.

In cold climates, the indoor environment can be a welcome relief for occupants, many of whom spend more hours indoors than outdoors, especially during winter months. Creating a good indoor environment with comfortable, reliable, and sustainable spaces becomes a high priority. Following on the theme of “Best Practices for HVAC, plumbing and heat supply” in cold climate regions, started in ASHRAE (2021), the project team will continue collecting examples and analysing best practices of HVAC systems applicable to remote locations in cold regions. They will explore industrial applications that can use waste heat for facility heating loads. A partnership between mechanical engineers and building envelope experts will examine the applicability of limited air humidification. The team will analyse the use of heat pumps for heating and cooling and investigate freeze protection for buried utilities. They will also analyse the use of multi-fuel options for power plants that can run on transitional, blue, and green fuels.

The resilience of energy systems (power and thermal) will ensure clean and reliable production of electricity and heat, and will also be designed to ability to help meet the challenges of fuel availability in remote locations. Resilience requires smart integration of thermal and power grids using combinations of different technological solutions to overcome existing barriers (e.g., organizational barriers, infrastructure limitations, cost uncertainties, policy barriers).

Thermal energy storage (TES) may play a decisive role in future resilient energy systems in cold regions. Different types of TES are available for short, mid-term, and long-term storage. TES can be used by itself or along with water site heat pumps in integrated power-to-heat solutions.

The increased focus on energy-efficient buildings, integrated energy systems that use waste energy streams, energy from renewable energy sources, combined with backbone energy generation that can use transitional, blue, or green fuels will result in reliable and resilient energy communities in cold climates. Individual pieces of information required for the development of architectures of such systems for cold and remote locations are available from different sources, including completed and ongoing IEA EBC Program Annexes, i.e., Annex 51, Annex 60, Annex 63, Annex 64, Annex 67, Annex 73, Annex 75, Annex 80, Annex 79, and Annex 83. The proposed Annex will be building on this knowledge and will coordinate its activities with ongoing Annexes to prevent duplication of efforts.

Project Objectives

The proposed Annex aims to enhance the cooperation on energy resilience development to an international level through the collaboration initiatives of the IEA. The main objectives of the proposed project are: 

Objective 1: Identify major threats specific to cold regions that hinder the normal operation of buildings and energy systems; develop definitions, frameworks, and key performance indicators for energy-resilient buildings, communities, and energy supply systems; and establish requirements for habitability, survivability, indoor air quality, and buildings sustainability levels in cold regions for blue and black skies operations.

Objective 2: Survey existing buildings and communities, and document case studies with practices that promote resilience and reduce health and infrastructure risks in cold regions.

Objective 3: Assess concepts of existing and planned net and nearly zero carbon buildings and communities in terms of their technical, social and economic performance and develop guidelines (for local conditions, but that can be scaled up) to implement needed technical solutions for energy-resilient buildings and communities in countries with cold regions/climates.

Objective 4: Disseminate best practices for planning and construction of energy-resilient buildings and communities in cold regions through technical papers, conference presentations, and training. 

Project Scope and Limitations

This project will concentrate on developing guidelines that will provide technical, economic, environmental, and
societal approaches to construction and renovation That will result in energy-resilient buildings and communities in
cold climate conditions and remote locations.

• Climates: cold, very cold, subarctic climate zones (U.S. DOE climate zone 6-8 or D and E groups in the Köppen climate classification).
• Scale: small cities, military installations, and building clusters.
• Remoteness: variously defined, e.g., related to power supply (e.g., a facility not connected to the grid), or related to physical isolation (a facility that is logistically challenging to reach), etc.

Requirements to be developed include those related to environmental quality, building envelope, HVAC systems and their controls, and district heating systems and their elements.

Environmental requirements: comfortable (under blue skies) and habitable (under black skies). Buildings must be thermally insulated, have a vapor barrier in the case of humification, be airtight, and have a mass that slows heat loss. 

Mechanical systems must operate under the below-freezing outside air temperatures in winter and at warm temperatures in summer.

Energy supply systems must consider the sectoral coupling of energy sources using microgrids and local thermal grids (e.g., adding heat pumps [HPs] to thermal grids) and energy storage (power and heat) which reduces dependence on single-fuel energy plants.

The project will address different residential and commercial building types, both permanent and temporary. 

There is no limitation on building materials. Wood, steel, and concrete may be the most common loadbearing material used in cold regions today, but this may change as the demand for sustainable solutions increases, e.g., concrete has a high mass and is therefore beneficial for thermal resilience; however, production of cement requires a significant energy use and results in significant CO2 emission; the use of other materials, e.g., PCM, can achieve similar or better resilience related effect with lower CO2 footprint. Modular buildings, including tiny houses, may be a possibility to reduce the CO2 footprint per person.

Audience and Beneficiaries

The main target audience for this Annex project are decision makers, energy planners, architects, engineers, building physicists, construction companies, facilities managers, and academia.

Decision makers will benefit from understanding policies, standards, and the level of planning required for developing and maintaining resilient buildings and communities, and the level of logistics and maintenance needed.

Energy planners will benefit from learning about framing goals and the scope of planning required for a successful energy master plan.

Architects, engineers, and construction companies will be introduced to new concepts and technologies that should be considered during the design and construction process and the level of coordination and cooperation needed between different trades.

Facility managers will be introduced to the requirements for operation and maintenance of energy systems and concepts to be used for existing buildings retrofits.

Students and young researchers will be provided with information on state-of-the-art concepts and advanced technologies.