The DOI matches its Crossref record; 15 of the 15 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment
Open accessAbstract
Vast quantities of energy are consumed in heating and cooling to provide what are now regarded as acceptable standards of thermal comfort. In the UK as in a number of other countries, there is a real danger that responses in anticipation of global warming and climate change – including growing reliance on air-conditioning – will increase energy demand and CO2 emissions even further. This is an appropriate moment to reflect on the history and future of comfort, both as an idea and as a material reality. Based on interviews and discussions with UK policy makers and building practitioners involved in specifying and constructing what will become the indoor environments of the future, four possible scenarios are identified each with different implications for energy and resource consumption. By actively promoting debate about the indoor environment and associated ways of life, it may yet be possible to avoid becoming locked into social and technical trajectories that are ultimately unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to inspire and initiate just such a discussion through demonstrating that comfort is a highly negotiable socio-cultural construct.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Thermal comfort: Analysis and applications in environmental engineering
(1972) · Applied Ergonomics · doi:10.1016/s0003-6870(72)80074-7 · Cited by 4,451
Adaptive thermal comfort and sustainable thermal standards for buildings
Nicol, J. F., & Humphreys, M. A. (2002) · Energy and Buildings · doi:10.1016/s0378-7788(02)00006-3 · Cited by 1,850
Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience; the Social Organisation of Normality
van den Burg, S. W. K. (2004) · Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling · Cited by 315
Thermal Delight in Architecture
Hancock, J. E., & Heschong, L. (1980) · JAE · doi:10.2307/1424633 · Cited by 263
Climatic variations in comfortable temperatures: the Pakistan projects
Nicol, J. F., Raja, I. A., Allaudin, A., & Jamy, G. N. (1999) · Energy and Buildings · doi:10.1016/s0378-7788(99)00011-0 · Cited by 242
A Standard for Natural Ventilation
Brager, G. S., & de Dear, R. (2000) · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · Cited by 225
Domestic energy fact file 2003
Shorrock, L. D., & Utley, J. (2003) · OpenGrey (Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique) · Cited by 224
Weather, clothing and thermal adaptation to indoor climate
Morgan, C., & de Dear, R. (2003) · Climate Research · doi:10.3354/cr024267 · Cited by 166
Air-Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-1960
Melosi, M. V., & Cooper, G. (2000) · The American Historical Review · doi:10.2307/2651880 · Cited by 113
Cited by
Caution! Transitions Ahead: Politics, Practice, and Sustainable Transition Management
Shove, E., & Walker, G. (2007) · Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space · doi:10.1068/a39310 · Cited by 1,012
Self-citationIntroducing the prebound effect: the gap between performance and actual energy consumption
Sunikka-Blank, M., & Galvin, R. (2012) · Building Research & Information · doi:10.1080/09613218.2012.690952 · Cited by 629
Urban Energy Transitions: Places, Processes and Politics of Socio-technical Change
Rutherford, J., & Coutard, O. (2014) · Urban Studies · doi:10.1177/0042098013500090 · Cited by 435
Nicol, J. F., & Roaf, S. (2017) · Building Research & Information · doi:10.1080/09613218.2017.1301698 · Cited by 133
Feedback and adaptive behaviour in green buildings
Brown, Z. B., Dowlatabadi, H., & Cole, R. J. (2009) · Intelligent Buildings International · doi:10.3763/inbi.2009.0034 · Cited by 51
Metadata
- Authors
- Chappells †, H., & Shove ‡, E.
- Venue
- Building Research & Information
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2005-01
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 32-40
- ISSN
- 0961-3218 (ISSN-L)
- 1466-4321
- OpenAlex
- W2005673708
- Cited by
- 428
- References
- 15
- FWCI
- 44.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/0961321042000322762
- The paper
- Chappells †, H., & Shove ‡, E. (2005). Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment. Building Research & Information. https://doi.org/10.1080/0961321042000322762
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.