Evolving Opportunities for Providing Thermal Comfort
The objective of the paper “Evolving Opportunities for Providing Thermal Comfort” is to encourage new ways of thinking about designing or operating buildings to optimize both comfort and energy performance while hopefully creating more rich and variable environments. The ideas are primarily illustrated with examples of research done by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California, Berkeley.
From the Introduction – Providing enriched thermal environments must go conjointly with the critically important goal of reducing the energy use in buildings. It is estimated that buildings contribute 39% of the total US greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions primarily due to their operational energy use, and 80% of that energy use is for heating, cooling, ventilating and lighting. The paper explores the ‘cost of comfort’ in buildings including the implications of the perceptions by the occupants.
Gail Brager, Professor of Architecture, Hui Zhang and Edward Arens, Professor Emeritus of Architecture
Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley