Do we need building performance data to propose a climatic zoning for building energy efficiency regulations?

•Exploratory analysis allowed to extract remarkable insights from data.•Building energy simulations provided data to assess climatic zone methods.•Uniqueness and dispersion were used as performance indicators for the assessment.•Building performance data has the potential to improve climatic zonings. Climatic zoning is frequently used in building energy efficiency regulations. However, there is no consensus about which climatic zoning method should be used for a given purpose. This study aims to verify if building performance data is necessary to propose a climatic zoning for building energy efficiency regulations. First, an exploratory data analysis was performed based on correlations of climatic variables and building performance results from an office building in 411 Brazilian cities. The same building performance results were used to perform a preliminary assessment of seven climatic zoning methods: two globally well-known methods (ASHRAE 169 and Koppen-Geiger), the current Brazilian regulation method (NBR 15220), a proposal for a new Brazilian regulation (Roriz) and three alternative methods for climatic zoning proposed by the authors. The alternative methods were named as Data-driven, Enhanced degree-day and Decision tree method. The final assessment included 21 variations in the office building. The performance of each climatic zoning method was analysed according to two indicators: uniqueness and dispersion. This study shows the importance of building performance data to improve the quality of climatic zonings for building energy efficiency regulations.