The office of the future: Operational energy consumption in the post-pandemic era

Abstract

As a result of COVID-19 and in order to combat the spread of the virus, work-from-home and remote working has become a widely accepted practice in professional settings globally. It is widely known that we are currently experiencing a highly transient period in terms of how we define work. Office work is progressively becoming more collaborative, modern workforce more mobile, and office occupancy more dynamic. As flexible working evolves, it becomes apparent that the role of workspace is also changing. So will the occupancy patterns and operation of office building. Using a mixed-method approach, this paper explores the future of offices, considering flexible working model and investigates the operational energy consumption of UK office buildings in the post-pandemic era. Previous research has shown that office buildings are one of the five largest sectors in the building stock in terms of energy consumption. The results of this study demonstrate that by embracing emerging transitions in hybrid working model and activity-based workspace environments, the energy demand in the office building sector could fall below pre-COVID-19 levels, with significant energy savings reaching up to 50% energy reduction in comparison to the pre-pandemic situation.

The impact of COVID-19 and working from home on the workspace retained at the main location office space and the future use of satellite offices

“…New hybrid work models bring new opportunities in this area. For example, Mantesi et al (2022) predicted that the energy demand in office buildings in the post-pandemic era could fall below the pre-pandemic level by as much as 50%.…”

Gaussian Mixture Model based pattern recognition for understanding the long-term impact of COVID-19 on energy consumption of public buildings

“…These measures restricted people's activities in different types buildings, and thus affected the energy consumption pattern accordingly. Recent studies have consistently identified energy consumption increases in the residential sector [ [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] ] while decreases in the non-residential sector such as university buildings [ [9] , [10] , [11] ], municipal buildings [ 12 ], commercial buildings [ 13 ] and offices [ 14 ]. Although these studies confirmed the significant impact, it is unclear whether the impact is continuing, which is an important question to explore further for managing the energy profiles in the post-pandemic era.…”

Shift to remote learning degrades water quality in buildings

“…Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, commercial and institutional buildings now experience weeks and even months of below-normal occupancy due to increased use of remote work and learning. It has been acknowledged that offices must become flexible spaces because employees have indicated that working remotely 2-3 days a week lowers the amount of work-life conflict and are predicted that remote working will become the norm (Mantesi et al, 2022). As buildings fluctuate between periods of below-normal and normal occupancy, water quality studies are needed to understand how building water systems are behaving.…”