Alrebei, Odi FawwazObeidat, BushraAl-Radaideh, TamerLe Page, Laurent M.Hewlett, SallyAl Assaf, Anwar H.Amhamed, Abdulkarem I.2022-11-292022-11-292022-11-22Alrebei, O.F.; Obeidat, B.; Al-Radaideh, T.; Le Page, L.M.; Hewlett, S.; Al Assaf, A.H.; Amhamed, A.I. Quantifying CO2 Emissions and Energy Production from Power Plants to Run HVAC Systems in ASHRAE-Based Buildings. Energies 2022, 15, 8813.http://hdl.handle.net/10919/112725Recent evidence available in the literature has highlighted that the high-energy consumption rate associated with air conditioning leads to the undesired “overcooling” condition in arid-climate regions. To this end, this study quantified the effects of increasing the cooling setpoint temperature on reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions to mitigate overcooling. DesignBuilder software was used to simulate the performance of a generic building operating under the currently adopted ASHRAE HVAC criteria. It was found that increasing the cooling setpoint temperature by 1 °C will increase the operative temperature by approximately 0.25 °C and reduce the annual cooling electricity consumption required for each 1 m² of an occupied area by approximately 8 kWh/year. This accounts for a reduction of 8% in cooling energy consumption compared to the ASHRAE cooling setpoint (i.e., t_s = 26 °C) and a reduction in the annual CO₂ emission rate to roughly 4.8 kg/m² °C. The largest reduction in cooling energy consumption and CO₂ emissions was found to occur in October, with reduced rates of approximately–1.3 kWh/m² °C and −0.8 kg/m² °C, respectively.application/pdfenCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalASHRAECO2 emissionsenergy consumptionindoor operative temperaturearid-climate regionsArticle - Refereed2022-11-24https://doi.org/10.3390/en15238813