As any office dweller will know, getting the temperature right is one of the thorniest issues to deal with.  Research from UC Berkeley illustrates the scale of the problem, with the huge amount of energy spent cooling offices often wasted.

The study suggests that many offices are overcooled, especially for female occupants.  The researchers analyzed two large datasets from office buildings across the United States, which demonstrated the extent of overcooling.  What’s more, this phenomenon has a disproportionate effect on women.

Taking the temperature

For instance, they assessed nearly 40,000 responses given to the CBE Occupant Survey, which explored how satisfied people were with the temperature in their workplace.  The results show that 38% of people are unhappy, which is significantly worse than the 20% figure outlined in official guidelines.

What’s more, women were found to be 1.8 times more likely to be unhappy with the temperature in their workplace than men, with the typical gripe being that offices were too cold during summer.  Indeed, just 24% of complaints about office temperatures were from men.

The researchers also gathered responses from nearly 17,000 Twitter users about the temperature of their workplaces between January 2010 and December 2019.  The Twitter analysis revealed that complaints about cold offices were most common on warmer days, and again were most common among women.

The researchers believe that their findings demonstrate the problem caused by overcooling in offices across the United States, although the researchers don’t appear to have examined the issue of overheating, which appears to be a more common complaint among men.

The temperature regulation of offices has been a bone of contention for many years, and it seems unlikely that this research will resolve matters either way.  Indeed, with climate change likely to play a bigger role in rising temperatures in the years ahead, it’s quite likely to be a debate that rages on.