Energy consumption in buildings and female thermal demand

Abstract

Energy consumption of residential buildings and o ces adds up to about 30% of total carbon dioxide emissions; and occupant behaviour contributes to 80% of the variation in energy consumption 1 . Indoor climate regulations are based on an empirical thermal comfort model that was developed in the 1960s (ref. 2). Standard values for one of its primary variables-metabolic rate-are based on an average male, and may overestimate female metabolic rate by up to 35% (ref. 3). This may cause buildings to be intrinsically nonenergy-e cient in providing comfort to females. Therefore, we make a case to use actual metabolic rates. Moreover, with a biophysical analysis we illustrate the e ect of miscalculating metabolic rate on female thermal demand. The approach is fundamentally di erent from current empirical thermal comfort models and builds up predictions from the physical and physiological constraints, rather than statistical association to thermal comfort. It provides a substantiation of the thermal comfort standard on the population level and adds flexibility to predict thermal demand of subpopulations and individuals. Ultimately, an accurate representation of thermal demand of all occupants leads to actual energy consumption predictions and real energy savings of buildings that are designed and operated by the buildings services community.As the built environment is focusing more on design of energyefficient buildings (for example, near-zero-energy buildings), we argue that indoor climate standards should accurately represent the thermal demand of all occupants. Otherwise there is a great risk that occupants will adapt their behaviour to optimize personal comfort, which may in turn nullify the effects of supposed energy-efficient designs. Furthermore, various fields in commerce, science and policymaking depend on accurate predictions of building energy consumption. For instance, commercial incentives for building renovations premised on energy-saving predictions; scientific climate change simulations require building energy consumption predictions to account for warming effects in winter 4 ; and policymaking for resource management requires integrated resource assessments including energy consumption by buildings 5 .The total variation in building energy consumption that is explained by occupant behaviour includes operating the thermostat, windows or air conditioning system 1 . In general, females prefer a higher room temperature than males in home and office situations, and mean values may differ as much as 3 K (males: 22 • C versus females: 25 • C; refs 6,7). Despite this discrepancy in preferred room temperature, no significant gender effect is found with respect to the mean skin temperature range that is associated with thermal comfort (males: 32.8-33.8 • C versus females: 32.4-33.6 • C; ref. 8).Indoor thermal environment design is primarily based on PMV/PPD (predicted mean vote/percentage people dissatisfied) criteria. The PMV is expressed on the ASHRAE 7-point Thermal Sensation Scale ranging from cold (−3) to hot ...

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