October 22, 2026
Designing for tomorrow’s climate instead of yesterday’s, Lessons Learnt
This report captures the practical lessons from the Building for the Future project for policymakers, funders and future project teams. It reflects on translating climate projections into building simulation weather files and on testing those files with nine volunteer practitioners. It also responds to growing policy interest in future climate and heatwave files, including the 2026/27 Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings Implementation Plan.
Six lessons emerge. Future climate data is not plug-and-play, co-design was essential to producing usable files, and the range of possible futures creates a major implementation challenge. Extreme weather files offer important new capability but need interpretation support, volunteer testing was valuable but not sufficient, and a long-term national capability is needed. The report also sets out limitations and future work, including expanding beyond the eleven prototype locations, commercial applications and urban heat island effects.
