A new study published Monday has finally answered the age-old question asked primarily by women: why is the office so fucking frigid all the fucking time?
The study, entitled “Energy consumption in buildings and female thermal demand,” was published in the journal Nature Climate Change and found that most buildings are still heated and cooled based on a thermal comfort model that was first developed in the 1960s. One of the model’s primary variables is the average metabolic rate of men (specifically a 4—year-old, 154 lb. man). Women’s metabolic rate is significantly lower.
“In a lot of buildings, you see energy consumption is a lot higher because the standard is calibrated for men’s body heat production,” said the study’s co-author Boris Kingma, who is a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center, in an interview with the New York Times. “If you have a more accurate view of the thermal demand of the people inside, then you can design the building so that you are wasting a lot less energy, and that means the carbon dioxide emission is less.”
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Safy and Health Administration recommends that offices keep their thermostats set between 68 and 76 degrees Fahrenheit—but those temperatures suit people differently.
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