ADAPTIVE COMFORT APPLICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA AND IMPACTS ON BUILDING ENERGY CONSUMPTION

The buildings sector offers the greatest potential for cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gasemissions out of all the sectors examined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.However that potential was based purely on technical measures applied to existing buildings and newconstruction. It is becoming increasingly clear that non-technical options involving building occupantcomfort, culture and behaviour will also need to be implemented in order to stabilise atmosphericconcentrations of CO2 within a useful timeframe. The adaptive comfort model provides a theoreticallycoherent option that opens up many cost-effective, low energy design alternatives. Numerousexample applications are appearing all over the world. This paper describes Australian applications inmixed-mode buildings. Estimates of building energy conservation are 40% and 45% for the Sydneyand Melbourne case-studies respectively, compared to the Australian conventional HVAC benchmark.A pattern is emerging Post Occupancy Evaluations of Australias recent green building stock; lowenergybuildings designed around adaptive comfort principles are often evaluated as warmer insummer and cooler in winter, sometimes uncomfortably so. The POE literature indicates that, despitesome minor discomforts, occupants are still favourably disposed towards Australias new greenbuildings, auguring well for mainstream acceptance of adaptive comfort strategies.