Reconfiguring Thermal Comfort in Offices

In the EU as a whole, heating and cooling accounts for half of final energy demand (EC 2016). Research and policies to reduce this demand have focused almost exclusively on the energy efficiency of central heating and cooling technologies and the buildings those technologies are situated in; the result has been extremely small reductions in energy demand (Wade & Eyre 2015; POST 2015). A small body of research has focused on the potential of adaptive thermal comfort to reduce energy demand (e.g. De Dear et al 2013; Nicol & Roaf 2017). The vast majority of thermal comfort research has been conducted by physical scientists interested in sizing heating, ventilation and air-conditioning units (Nicol & Roaf 2017). These engineers, building physicists, architects, etc have focused on variables about the building, e.g. Temperature and humidity, together with a limited set of variables on the human thermoregulatory system. Adaptive thermal comfort researchers critique the narrow definition of comfort and laboratory setting of much of this research. However, their research is still focused on buildings and the physical environment. Almost none of this research is undertaken with or by social scientists. The human for which this comfort is ostensibly being provided is almost entirely absent from thermal comfort research, other than as a laboratory or fieldwork subject reporting "too hot" or "too cold"(de Dear et al 2013).
Thermal comfort research and research and policy focused on central heating and cooling technologies has been extensively critiqued by sociologists (e.g. Chappells & Shove 2005; Cooper 2008; Shove et al 2008), who point out that people achieve thermal comfort using a broad range of approaches and technologies (including everyday technologies such as clothing, cups of tea, etc). Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical work has investigated how people actually achieve thermal comfort and how this relates to the technologies of heating and cooling. This gap is associated with the absence of social researchers in thermal comfort research: "Through this review of the literature it became evident that there is a gap in thermal comfort studies in relation to interdisciplinary research. The association with other professionals
like psychologists, physiologists, sociologists...could be of great value" (Rupp et al. 2015 p. 195). The anthropological study by Wilhite et al (1996) is a rare example. A rare paper exploring the social dimension of thermal comfort in an office environment actually investigates the potential of the outdoors to puncture air conditioning "addiction" (Hitchings 2011). Much current research and policy focuses on "low carbon" central heating and cooling technologies such as electric heat pumps (Eyre & Baruah 2015) despite the problems faced in getting these technologies to
market (e.g. consumer and "middle actor" indifference or resistance), and the uncertainty over whether use of these technologies will actually result in the predicted reductions in carbon emissions (Winskel 2015). Vesely & Zeiler's (2014) review of personal comfort systems concludes that their use could reduce energy use by around 40%, while improving comfort, health and performance. Despite this potential, personal comfort systems do not feature at all in mainstream research and policy on reducing the energy use and carbon emissions associated with achieving thermal comfort. Personal comfort research has been overwhelmingly undertaken either via simulation, or in climate chambers; very few studies have been conducted in real world conditions (Vesely & Zeiler 2014) or looked at how personal comfort works with or against more technical solutions for heating and cooling. Further, almost none of this research has been conducted with social researchers; the social science-informed work by Kuijer's (2014) design students is a rare exception.