Heating and cooling: energy efficiency by 'local' environmental management

Human thermoregulation is an effective and energy-efficient method for controlling our body temperature within narrow and critical limits. Although complex and made up of many components, in terms of both structure and modes of heat transfer, the system is well-understood and can be 'managed' by external influences. This leads to the possibility, already implemented in some clothing and in medicine, of regulating our 'local' environment in order to create acceptable comfort conditions. Within the vicinity of the human body, the management of the environment to ensure comfort would, in theory, also be much more energy-efficient than conditioning of whole buildings or rooms. This would be done without needing to use excessive amounts of energy to heat or cool the spaces which we are not occupying-which may represent 95% of our domestic or work space. The potential for energy saving is significant. Within the EU, recent figures indicate that 41% of our total energy use is in buildings, and a large proportion of this is for space conditioning. This paper briefly examines factors affecting human comfort, and human thermoregulation, before describing current and potential methods for changing our local environment that could potentially be energy-efficient, cost-effective and comparatively simple to implement.