Associate Professor - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. PhD Architect. She belongs to the Bioclimatic Architecture in a Sustainable Environment Research Group based in the technical University of Madrid. Her research focuses on energy poverty from the perspective of the right to habitability and thermal comfort in housing. She is currently the principal investigator in the UPM of the European funded projects EPIU and BUILDSPACE and coordinates COOLTORISE. She has participated in a total of 16 research projects, 22 scientific articles, 8 books and 26 conference presentations.
BUILD UP: Could you define ‘bioclimatic architecture’ and how it is linked to the improvement of building occupants' comfort?
CARMEN SÁNCHEZ-GUEVARA: Bioclimatic architecture represents the accumulation of years of experience in building construction, reaching its maximum potential for climate adaptation and therefore, the utilisation of natural resources to achieve habitable conditions for its occupants. For me, the great value of bioclimatic architecture today lies in its passive nature, its ability to achieve the best comfort conditions for its occupants with minimal resource consumption.
BUP: Is building occupants' comfort well addressed in energy policies and tools (such as EPCs)?
CSG: Current tools for assessing the energy efficiency of buildings are primarily focused on CO2 emissions (understandable in part due to the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and non-renewable primary energy consumption. However, these values do not adequately reflect the ability of buildings to provide habitable conditions for their occupants. For example, we do not know the number of hours of comfort that can be achieved in winter or summer without using heating or cooling systems, in a building with an A energy label.
BUP: How important is the social dimension when addressing the energy affordability for households?
CSG: We know that the main causes of energy poverty are high energy prices, low energy efficiency of homes, low incomes, and specific energy needs of households. These four indicators are also interconnected. The people who inhabit the worst-maintained housing stock and have higher energy demands are those who cannot access better accommodation. Similarly, it should also be considered that the improvements we need to carry out in the overall housing stock cannot be done without specific assistance programs for households trapped in inefficient homes and lacking the capacity to take action due to their greater economic vulnerability.
BUP: What is the goal of the COOLTORISE project? How is it going to address energy poverty in terms of the wellbeing of building occupants?
CSG: COOLTORISE aims to reduce summer energy poverty conditions in households. We want to decrease their energy needs, improve their well-being, and reduce their exposure to heat and potential health impacts. The project is based on efforts to enhance their adaptation to high temperatures through workshops to promote a heat-aware culture and optimise energy bills, as well as collective interventions in outdoor spaces to create small climatic shelters that combat urban heat.
BUP: How does the promotion of passive cooling measures and climate shelters slow the penetration of air conditioning in Mediterranean Europe?
CSG: Along with the implementation of passive strategies to combat overheating in homes, such as blocking solar radiation or reducing internal thermal loads, it is essential to dissipate the accumulated heat. In the Mediterranean climate, this has traditionally been achieved through night-time ventilation of homes. However, in summer, in the city centres of large cities, the urban heat island phenomenon leads to increased temperatures that prevent homes from naturally dissipating heat through night-time ventilation. Therefore, the incorporation of urban microclimate cooling strategies to mitigate these temperatures is crucial not only for improving well-being in urban spaces but also for enhancing the heat dissipation capacity of buildings and to reduce cooling energy demand.
Additionally, creating comfortable and collective spaces in the city provides citizens with places to seek refuge from high temperatures and reduces the increasing use of air conditioning, which, in turn, has a negative effect on urban temperatures by directly expelling heat into the street.
BUP: How is the project expecting to raise awareness of households about implementing sustainable cooling solutions?
CSG: We know from our fellow epidemiologists that the so-called heat-aware culture has a positive impact on people's health during climate events such as heatwaves. In the workshops with households, we share and value the knowledge of the attendees, exchanging experiences and personal strategies on how to condition their homes. We also organise walks and mappings to engage in collective reflection on the use of public space and identify areas of higher or lower comfort in the neighbourhood.
Similarly, in our interventions in outdoor spaces, we transform small parts of the city to create places where people can spend time in a cooler environment. All of these activities involve reflecting on the experiences of households during the summer season and informing them about the risks associated with exposure to high temperatures. This generates collective knowledge among neighbours about the best ways to combat heat at a low cost and with low energy consumption.
