果冻影院

The paper, published in July 2018 in the Building Services Engineering Research and Technology journal, is聽entitled 鈥溾��. Its authors are聽Prof Robert Lowe, Dr Gesche Huebner and Prof Tadj Oreszczyn, all from the 果冻影院 Energy Institute at The Bartlett.

Using projections from the IPCC () about the likely聽rise in concentrations of atmospheric CO2 by the end of the century, the researchers examined what the effect on air quality might be for indoor workers, given that CO2 levels tend to be higher indoors.聽

The authors found that, overall, half of all studies found a decline in cognitive performance when levels of CO2 were increased. Given that a significant rise in CO2 levels is expected due to continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, it will be necessary for building engineers to find ways of reducing indoor CO2 levels over and above the existing requirements for ventilation, which in itself has implications for energy use in buildings.

In summarising their findings, the authors report that聽actions to mitigate the rise in indoor CO2 levels聽"are likely to result in significant indirect impacts on the engineering of ventilation systems and associated energy use in all enclosed spaces".

This means that relatively simple incremental changes to building services engineering practice will be able to offset increases in atmospheric background CO2 concentration in the short-to-medium term. However, by the end of the century, on a business-as-usual projection of聽global CO2 emissions, it will become聽impossible to maintain current limits on indoor CO2 concentration without resorting to significantly more expensive approaches, such as CO2 removal.

Media coverage

The聽paper's findings have聽featured in numerous publications, as well as on (44 minutes in) on Sunday 9 December.聽

Image: Photo by聽听辞苍听