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The increasing potential for dramatic climatic changes, the need to protect the future of our energy supply and rising fuel prices, mean that there is an urgent need to reduce energy consumption. This Special Issue of Indoor and Built Environment on ‘People and energy use in the indoor and built environment’ recognises that while buildings account for 32% of total global final energy use, the role of people in buildings’ energy use is often overlooked, despite the fact that ‘buildings don’t use energy: people do.’ The papers in this Special Issue demonstrate a broadening of the social science contribution to understanding energy use in the indoor and built environment. As well as focusing on ‘routine actions’ (or behaviours) using technologies and buildings, many papers presented here focus on ‘one-off actions’ to change technologies or buildings. Several papers go beyond a focus on individual building occupants, to include chains of actors or intermediaries (e.g. landlords) that influence the choice and/or use of technologies or buildings. These papers often also address the processes or chains of actions entailed in introducing new technology or buildings – such as service design or the communication process. Many papers explore the social, economic or technical context for actors and their actions. Most papers explore motivations for actions. Indeed, for many authors in this Special Issue, context is motivation and, combined with existing technologies and buildings, it creates the conditions that virtually require the routine actions that are observed. A few papers report on experiments with relatively ‘deep’ interdisciplinarity; approaches that might help the social and technical sciences learn from each other and so improve our understanding of people and energy use in the indoor and built environment. Three papers focus on the use of technology. Moore et al. note that the installation of heat pumps into homes has traditionally been seen as a purely technical matter, but if heat pumps are not used effectively, they won’t save energy. Examining the installation of domestic heat pumps in UK social housing, they focus on the design of the service to support the user experience of this new technology. Landlords and installers thought heat pumps were too complicated for users and more complicated than necessary. Tenants felt they were given insufficient information on how to use their heat pump, and many lacked confidence using heat pump controls, resulting in feelings of frustration and dependence. However, the authors’ prototype leaflet on using the heat pump controls was not favourably evaluated by users and tenants wanted a personal follow-up visit from the landlord or installer to answer any questions. Belatedly trying to explain how to use a too-complicated technology seems a less-promising approach than developing a technology and its control interface to suit its users. Dimitrokali et al. also examine the use of technology – smart home heating controls. Participants were customers of a UK utility company who volunteered to take part; nearly all were men who felt they had a good understanding of the purpose of smart home heating controls. Participants felt the trial positively changed their heating behaviour but wanted better capacity to control schedules when away from home and personalised tips on how to control their heating. The use of technology is also explored by Watson, focusing on a recently built UK ‘passive design’ office development, featuring a range of natural ventilation technologies and newly inhabited by a tenant organisation. The building was using significantly more energy than predicted, even after a post-occupancy evaluation helped fine-tune the technologies. The author uses social practice theory to understand this ‘performance gap’. Although the material element (technologies) of social practice theory was eventually functioning correctly, this was not the case for the three other elements of the practices framework: embodied habits, engagement (developing shared meaning) and institutionalised knowledge. The habits of building users were deeply

Physical activity levels in children are low and sitting time high, despite the health benefits of regular physical activity and limited sitting. Children spend a large proportion of their time at school, hence school-based interventions targeting physical activity and sitting behaviour may be important. Whilst some aspects of school buildings, their layout and furniture may influence children's physical activity and sitting, these effects could be intertwined with pedagogical approaches. This scoping review aims to identify gaps in the research literature regarding the influence of the indoor school environment on pedagogical approaches and on physical activity and sitting. In primary schools, it was found that physical activity can be integrated into lessons with some benefits on academic behaviour and possibly academic performance. Overall, however, the role of the indoor built environment is poorly investigated, although a handful of studies suggest that a radical change in primary school classrooms may increase physical activity and that stand-biased desks may be promising. This study provides a contribution to the emerging research fields of ‘active design’ from the perspective of indoor school design, highlighting a dearth of research, especially on sitting and for secondary education, and a lack of relevant conceptual frameworks.

Several industry-led initiatives in various countries demonstrate a new interest in wellbeing and buildings. This paper adopts a scoping review method aiming to establish the most prevalent and insightful definitions and dimensions of wellbeing in buildings applied in the recent published literature. The paper adopts a two-step method for identifying and categorizing the conceptual approaches to wellbeing encountered in the current literature. First, an overview is presented of the term ���wellbeing��� and its development over time. Second, the broad wellbeing categories identified are further refined and complemented via a deductive approach, drawing the final set of conceptual themes informed by the papers reviewed in this study. Nine themes were identified, two of which deductively emerged from the papers included in this study: environmental satisfaction/comfort and cognitive performance/productivity. The findings emphasize the heterogeneity of conceptual approaches to research concerning ���wellbeing in buildings���, an ambiguity between wellbeing outcomes or determinants, and the need for greater clarity on the relative contributions of different wellbeing dimensions to overall individual or population wellbeing. Based on these findings, future work could be carried out to provide guidance on how to evaluate claims of evidence-based building design which foster individual or population wellbeing.

Various countries have introduced minimum cooling set-points for air-conditioning either through voluntary or mandatory policies. In the UK, recent recommendations advocate higher summer thermostat settings in offices than formerly, with an indication that 24±2 °C may deliver thermally comfortable environments. However, limited published information exists on the actual summer temperatures maintained in UK air-conditioned offices and on facility managers’ perspectives on imposing limits upon summer set-point (SSP). To address this knowledge gap, an online survey was distributed to facility managers responsible for temperature regulation in UK air-conditioned offices. Over 60% of the respondents report a SSP≤22 °C, indicating potential to raise SSPs. Responses indicate that a recommendation is preferred to a mandatory approach in limiting SSPs, although a mandatory policy is acknowledged as a potentially more effective driver of change. Whilst a mandatory policy on SSP limits may not be welcomed by FMs and would be difficult to enforce, public sector organisations could lead the way in introducing minimum SSPs, as they generally implement higher SSPs than private organisations, are more supportive of such a policy and would accept higher SSPs. Further intervention studies are required to assess the impact on occupants’ expectations and productivity, along with senior management’s perceptions.

This Special Issue of Indoor and Built Environment addresses health and wellbeing within the context of the current drive for ‘low-carbon’ buildings – where the term ‘low-carbon’ is used here to include zero or nearly zero carbon/energy approaches. Papers are mainly from invited authors, and a few are extended versions drawn from a relevant Conference of the UK Indoor Environments Group (UKIEG) held in June 2013. All papers were subject to the journal’s peerreview process from authoritative independent experts. Whilst the focus is primarily on the United Kingdom and Europe, and especially on heating-dominated countries, many lessons/issues are also broadly applicable to other climates and regions. This introductory Editorial provides a background overview of the topic, discusses key themes emerging from the papers and argues that the lack in joined-up thinking in the climate change and health policy agendas requires researchers to urgently address one of the main challenges in this field – namely how to ‘sell’ the importance and value of addressing complexity and uncertainty. The intrinsically complex nature of the relationship between health/wellbeing and low-carbon buildings has been discussed for some time in various contexts. Various communities have debated the matter, including the UK Indoor Environments Group (UKIEG), a multidisciplinary network of academic, policy makers and industry concerned with the quality of indoor environments – especially from a health and wellbeing perspective. UKIEG members – some of whom are authors of papers in this Special Issue and have presented at our Conferences – have debated the topic(s) of this Special Issue several times since the UKIEG’s foundation in 2003. These debates have often been accompanied by a great deal of frustration amongst concerns of: (1) a disconnect between the health and the energy/carbon policies; (2) a lack of suitable evidence that current trajectories for low-carbon buildings are sufficiently robust and will provide ‘healthy’ indoor environments (or at least as healthy as current environments). Thus, this Special Issue is timely, not only as a formal contribution to those debates occurring within the UKIEG and other similar groups worldwide, but also because the implementation of the low-carbon buildings agenda is gaining momentum in several countries, both for new builds and retrofits. This means that the question of whether low-carbon buildings are more/ less conducive to health and wellbeing must be addressed urgently. Also, in the past couple of years the first mainstream low-carbon buildings (as opposed to isolated prototypes) have been constructed and inhabited, representing a fantastic opportunity to study the issue in situ. Buildings are responsible for more than 40% of global energy use and one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions both in developed and developing countries. Furthermore, the Building Sector has a large potential for delivering long-term, significant and cost-effective greenhouse gas emission reductions. Consequently, most developed countries and many developing countries have already taken steps to address emissions from the Building Sector, mainly in the form of legislation dictating minimum carbon/ energy standards – especially (but not solely) for new buildings and major renovations. For example, the European Union (EU) ‘Energy Performance of Buildings Directive’ was first published in 2002 (Directive 2002/91/EC), requiring all EU countries to enhance their building regulations and to introduce energy certification schemes for buildings, as well as inspections of boilers and air-conditioners. A further version of the Directive published in 2010 (Directive 2010/31/EU) also included, amongst other things, a move towards new and retrofitted nearly zero energy buildings. As highlighted by several authors in this Issue, the drive for new low-carbon design paradigms

This study investigated the relationships between thermal conditions and perceived learning performance (PLP) by comparing air-conditioned (AC) and fan-assisted naturally ventilated (FANV) environments. The study aimed to provide evidence to support decision-making on the use of fan-assisted natural ventilation in mixed-mode higher education buildings in hot–humid climates. A questionnaire survey on PLP and environmental comfort, including thermal comfort, visual comfort, hearing comfort, perceived air freshness and overall comfort, was conducted in seven typical classrooms. Indoor air temperatures, relative humidity and air velocity in the classrooms were also measured during the period of the survey. When comparing PLP scores between AC and FANV modes, no significant difference was found in PLP of students in the same state of thermal comfort (i.e. neutral and comfortable), except for uncomfortable groups – in which the students in FANV classrooms had significantly lower PLP than those in AC classrooms....

Due to recent studies and government policies, designers and facilities managers are becoming increasingly aware of the role of occupant behaviour in energy conservation in buildings. While the use of post-occupancy surveys and benchmark tools is widespread in the built environment, there is limited research on assessing environmental and energy saving behaviours – particularly in non-domestic buildings. This article focuses on the development and pilot-testing of a novel benchmarking tool for the assessment of behaviour change potential for energy saving in the workplace, with findings from an industrial case study comprising a manufacturing and office environment. Beyond the findings of the case study, the article aims to provide a methodological framework for an easy-to-use benchmarking tool of user-behaviour within the context of energy saving in factories and offices. Practical Implications: This article discusses the development and pilot-testing of a novel questionnaire-based benchmarking tool for the assessment of behaviour change potential for energy saving in office and industrial settings. Its application to a case-study from the manufacturing sector demonstrates that the tool is easy to use, and it provides valuable insights on areas for improvement in energy use within non-domestic buildings, with a focus on user behaviour and management approaches. The tool can be used in applied research, for example in intervention studies for comparison within the same organisation (before and after), and/or for benchmarking against the performance of similar organisations.

Following the Japanese Cool Biz campaign which advocated relaxed dress codes and cooling set-points of 28 °C in air-conditioned public buildings, other countries have introduced similar policies, with temperature limits varying in different countries. In the UK the British Council for Offices suggested that the summer cooling set-points of UK air-conditioned offices should be increased by 2 °C from the previously recommended 22 ± 2 °C. However, these recommendations are largely supported by desk-based analysis rather than using field studies. This paper presents the findings of a blind, controlled intervention study conducted in the summer of 2010 in an office building in London to investigate the effects of increasing the current cooling set-point to 24 °C. The temperature of one floor was changed and compared with a ‘control’ floor where the set-point remained unchanged. The indoor air temperatures were measured at various locations across the floors to monitor the temperatures the occupants were experiencing. The BUS post-occupancy evaluation survey was used to assess occupants’ self-reported comfort and satisfaction, whilst the NEP questionnaire was used to estimate occupants’ environmental attitudes. The findings from statistical analyses of the data collected for all 129 participants suggest that increasing the set-point temperature led to the occupants feeling significantly warmer in comparison with the group at lower temperature settings. Nevertheless, this did not affect the self-reported thermal comfort of the occupants in the intervention group, as depicted by an insignificant difference between the two groups. It was also observed that there is a positive correlation between the occupants’ tolerance of higher indoor air temperatures and their environmental attitudes, indicating that this could play a key role in the acceptance of indoor temperature changes in the UK.

This article discusses the capabilities and the application of an innovative combined hygrothermal and population model to assess the impact of building design and occupant behaviour on house dust mite populations in a mattress. The combined model is the first of its kind able to predict the impact of hourly transient hygrothermal conditions within a 3-dimensional mattress on a population of 'wild' Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus mites. The modelling shows that the current drive for energy efficiency in buildings might lead to an increase in house dust mite infestations in UK dwellings. Further research is needed to accurately determine the size of these effects and to adequately evaluate any trade-offs between energy efficiency measures and health outcomes.

The risks associated with climate change, resource scarcity, overreliance on fossil fuels, rising fuel prices and the threats to national securities are all compelling reasons for finding alternative/greener energy sources as well as for reducing our energy consumption. For the demand side, energy efficiency has been the main strategy utilised so far; in buildings, this often means a focus on technologies capable of delivering the same or better levels of comfort, with less energy. In the last decade, however, there has been an increasing awareness that technology and engineering alone do not deliver the expected energy savings, often because of the ‘misuse’ and/or ‘abuse’ of such energy efficient technologies from building users. Hence, greater attention is being paid to occupant behaviour, both in research and policy circles. The role of behaviour and behaviour change within the context of energy reduction can be grouped under two themes/strategies: (1) Ensuring that existing and new energy efficient technologies are adopted, and used appropriately; (2) Exploring to what extent people are willing to ‘conserve energy’ by using less of a product and/or accepting lower comfort levels. These two themes were partly captured in the title of a recent international Conference held in Oxford: Behave 2014 – Paradigm Shift: From Energy Efficiency to Energy Reduction through Social Change. Yet even at this Conference there was a prevalence of papers focused around the energy efficiency paradigm and the question: to what extent people should be nudged, persuaded or coerced into conserving energy? was not, in my view, adequately touched upon or debated. This is perhaps unsurprising, when considering that asking people not to aspire to high comfort levels may be unappealing for policy makers. In fact, many communication and public relations companies specialising in sustainability and climate change highlight the need for ‘positive messages’, avoiding gloomy pictures or end of the world scenarios, focusing instead on positive/happy stories and on what people can do (as opposed to what they should not do) – ideally also referring to additional benefits arising from saving energy. This is a very appealing notion, but also one with hidden complexities. The rebound effect is a fairly well-known potential side-effect of energy efficiency, where the financial savings arising from the new technology/service can incentivise greater use of the technology/service itself (e.g. greater indoor temperatures arising from home insulation), or lead to lower energy prices, which in turn can increase energy use. Whilst the question of whether rebound effects can altogether outweigh any savings arising from energy efficiency is being debated, clearly these effects should be minimised. This, however, can be difficult if the trade-offs between comfort and energy use are not adequately acknowledged. On the contrary, many energy saving interventions are ‘sold’ to the public on the basis of added benefits, such as saving money and greater thermal comfort – as in the case of home insulation measures. Inevitably, these approaches can embed expectations for higher thermal comfort, regardless of the fact that greater levels of comfort, whilst perhaps desirable, may in fact not be needed in some cases. The need to disambiguate the trade-offs between comfort and energy is apparent in the findings of a recent randomised controlled trial aiming to test whether tailored advice from a ‘trusted messenger’ on how to use heating controls can reduce energy consumption. The study, commissioned by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), found that the use of in-home advice or informative leaflets within social housing did not significantly

This paper describes a pilot intervention study on the effectiveness of house dust mite allergen avoidance for 12 asthmatic children (two being controls). In addition to mite allergen removal, the study included tailored advice aimed at reducing mite population growth via changes in moisture production, heating and ventilation habits. This paper focuses on the effects of this advice on household behaviour, hygrothermal conditions and mite populations. The efficacy of monitoring and modelling techniques is also discussed. The study highlighted a number of interrelated confounding factors which have to be addressed in future similar larger scale studies, but the results are promising with regards to the effectiveness of such studies. Practical application: This study suggests that in temperate climates tailored advice on moisture production, heating and ventilation habits can lead to valuable changes in hygrothermal conditions, which in turn can result in reduced mite populations. However, pre-existing adverse building conditions may hinder such changes, and the effectiveness of tailored advice and of hygrothermal modifications is often difficult to assess. It is therefore recommended that any similar larger intervention study measures ventilation rates and adequately controls for a number of confounding variables — including the effect of changes in outdoor conditions and of the removal of existing mite populations. In this respect, hygrothermal population models can play a very useful role in the assessment of study effectiveness.

This paper reviews the literature for evidence of links between ventilation rates in dwellings and moisture related respiratory health with a particular focus on house dust mites (HDM) and fungal growth. There is general consensus that a link exists between ventilation rates in dwellings and respiratory hazards (for example HDM). There is also general consensus of a link between these respiratory hazards and respiratory problems, but it is not clear to what extent hazards cause ill-health. Most existing data are inadequate for conclusions to be drawn whether ventilation rates directly cause respiratory problems. We discuss the many difficulties in attempting to establish these relationships, and suggest the need for larger studies.