Effect of Neighborhood Cluster Morphology on Energy Efficiency and Decarbonization in Regions of China with Hot Summers and Cold Winters

Global climate change has brought issues of pollution and environmental protection to the forefront of public attention. The energy consumption and carbon emissions of buildings have become critical issues in energy conservation and emission reduction, and are important for environmental protection. This article focuses on typical residential buildings in Wuhan, a representative of regions with hot summers and cold winters, to study the impacts of different layout design parameters on energy consumption and carbon emission intensity of building complexes. VirVil-HTB2 was used for modeling and simulating building complex layouts, while SPSS was used for data analysis. This study shows that solar radiation is an important indicator for predicting building energy efficiency, directly affecting energy consumption and carbon emissions. We also examined the impact of building orientation, building spacing, staggered spacing, and the layout of open spaces between buildings on heating energy consumption, cooling energy consumption, and carbon emissions. Building spacing was positively correlated with cooling energy consumption and negatively correlated with heating energy consumption and carbon emissions. The effect of staggered spacing on energy consumption is greater in the south–north direction than in the west–east direction. Additionally, setting the building orientation to 135° results in the lowest carbon emissions. Under the idealized simulation conditions of this study, the west–east dispersed open-space layout is a preferable configuration for reducing carbon emissions from residential neighborhood buildings. This study explores the impact of layout design parameters on energy consumption and carbon emissions of building complexes in hot summer and cold winter regions, providing references for energy optimization and environmental sustainability research.