Texas summers, women’s winters

Office buildings in the South can be notoriously cold in the summer months – or at least that’s what a majority of women would say who jokingly refer to offices in the summer as “women’s winter.” This year as more companies return to the office amid record heatwaves and requests by ERCOT for Texans to reduce electricity usage, we ask why office buildings temperatures can feel out of line with the outside temperatures. We talk to Stefano Schiavon, professor at UC Berkley’s Center for the Built Environment, about his research into gender disparities in thermal comfort in the office and what can be done to make more employees feel comfortable. Later in the episode interview John Myers of the real estate firm JLL who oversees a property management platform in Dallas about what Texas building owners do to try to balance tenant and employee comfort while reducing energy use. 

Links:

Related stories:

Meet the man everyone’s call in a heatwave

Houston’s public housing residents react to news that AC is on the way

Texas Power Outage Tracker

More reading:

Study: Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort

JLL: Why office buildings are so cold (or hot)

Study: Energy savings and thermal comfort in a zero energy office building with fans in Singapore

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