Increasing temperatures due to global warming will influence building, heating, and cooling practices. Therefore, this data set aims to provide formatted and adapted meteorological data for specific users who work in building design, architecture, building energy management systems, modelling renewable energy conversion systems, or others interested in this kind of projected weather data. These meteorological data are produced from the regional climate model MAR (Modèle Atmosphérique Régional in French) simulations. This regional model, adapted and validated over Belgium, is forced firstly, by the ERA5 reanalysis, which represents the closest climate to reality and secondly, by three Earth system models (ESMs) from the Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project database, namely, BCC-CSM2-MR, MPI-ESM.1.2, and MIROC6. The main advantage of using the MAR model is that the generated weather data have a high resolution (hourly data and 5 km) and are spatially and temporally homogeneous. The generated weather data follow two protocols. On the one hand, the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) and eXtreme Meteorological Year (XMY) files are generated largely inspired by the method proposed by the standard ISO15927-4, allowing the reconstruction of typical and extreme years, while keeping a plausible variability of the meteorological data. On the other hand, the heatwave event (HWE) meteorological data are generated according to a method used to detect the heatwave events and to classify them according to three criteria of the heatwave (the most intense, the longest duration, and the highest temperature). All generated weather data are freely available on the open online repository Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5606983, Doutreloup and Fettweis, 2021) and these data are produced within the framework of the research project OCCuPANt (https://www.occupant.uliege.be/ (last access: 24 June 2022)​​​​​​​ – ULiège).

Nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEBs) will be the standard in Europe in the future. How nZEBs are defined and therefore designed varies amongst Europe due to different national definitions/legislations. Furthermore, finding the optimal building design and technology sets for nZEBs under different boundary conditions (climate, availability of renewable energy sources on-site etc.) and for different building types (residential, non-residential) is still a challenge. Many studies in the field focus on active technologies and renewable energies in buildings. However, the effects of passive approaches on energy consumption are not quantified. This paper therefore focuses on the quantification of the effects of passive design approaches/technologies to improve the energy performance of buildings. Passive approaches are the basis for finding optimal nZEB technology sets. Technology sets are combinations of different types of technologies in nZEBs for both the satisfaction of energy needs and thermal comfort requirements. In this paper different passive approaches for already realized buildings in different European countries with different climate conditions [Stuttgart (Germany), Kiruna (Sweden) and Palermo (Italy)] are demonstrated. Even though several technologies are available to achieve nZEBs, applying and combining these technologies in an optimal way is still a challenge. Furthermore, higher initial investment costs for nZEBs are an obstacle for the market acceleration of nZEBs. Hence finding the best trade-off amongst the different goals, optimizing the most promising passive approaches that can be applied is a central part of the solution.