REVIEW AND ANALYSIS 27 CLIMATE ACTION COMFORT IS A CRUCIAL MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE ROBYN PENDER AS WE struggle to reduce our use of energy and carbon, discussions have become fixated on technical solutions. But what faces us is not precisely a technical problem; rather it is the outcome of a loss of knowledge in the global north as we began the industrial exploitation of fossil fuels. It is in the history of constructing and operating buildings that we can find the reasons for the current crisis and the answers for how to respond to the crisis rapidly and effectively. THE BACKGROUND The changes in the built environment enabled by the sudden availability of an apparently limitless supply of cheap energy were accelerated by the rise of manufacturing marketing and urbanisation. Building became an increasingly business-driven field with professions that were increasingly siloed. When failures arose in design or operation, the response was not to learn from those mistakes, but instead to throw more fossil fuels at the problem. After 250 years of profligacy, surrounded by over-glazed buildings with deep floor plates that require energy-hungry services, we are now reaping the results of what we sowed. Graphs of energy consumption show a massive increase since the 1960s, accelerating sharply over the past few decades: an increase that has not yet levelled off, let alone reversed, despite all our efforts towards ‘energy efficiency’. Faced with these shocking facts, the response has all too often been to blame ‘traditional’ solid-wall construction, even though the older buildings were functioning well before the sharp increase in energy use began. Part of this is certainly due to corporate greenwashing: ‘insulate Britain’ is a fine mantra for global manufacturers wishing to open markets currently closed to them. Much has been written about the problems of ‘fabric-first’ interventions on traditional buildings, but I think it is more than time we take a good hard look at the fundamental reason we think of insulating in the first place. It is the use of air temperature as a proxy for occupant comfort and health, and therefore the usability of buildings. The greatest proportion of energy used within buildings of the global north, and the increase in that use, is attributable to heating and cooling the air (that is, space-conditioning – cf GlobalABC.org). As thermal physiologist Hannah Pallubinsky¹ and her colleagues note, since the 1970s professional associations dealing with the servicing of the built environment (not least the influential American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, ASHRAE) have developed ever more demanding ‘comfort’ standards, all based on controlling air temperature. These are widely recognised to be based on deeply flawed research; nonetheless, they have made their way into many building recommendations and regulations. Thermometers are a product of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. Although they made assessment of air temperature easy, the inappropriateness of this as a measure of health and comfort was being called out by physiologists from the earliest days. Leonard Hill, head of the Medical Research Committee, wrote in 1915: ‘For the purposes of controlling the heating and ventilation of rooms the thermometer Even the dramatic changes during lockdown made barely a blip in global energy consumption. (Image: OurWorldInData.org/energy | CC BY) Energy consumption is measured in terawatt-hours in terms of ‘direct primary energy’ – the energy available in the resource, such as the fuels burnt in power plants before it has been transformed. This means that energy consumption figures include the energy lost due to inefficiencies in energy production. Data source: Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2023); Smil (2017) 160,000 TWh 140,000 TWh 120,000 TWh 100,000 TWh 80,000 TWh 60,000 TWh 40,000 TWh 20,000 TWh
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