>Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both being heated/cooled for 24 hours.
Don't know where you live and work, but that's not the case for me. In most buildings I've worked in, aircon/heating switches off around 6pm. And I certainly don't leave my home heated while not in it.
Of everything wrong with modern society, the inefficiency of having separate home and office buildings ranks pretty low imho.
> Of everything wrong with modern society, the inefficiency of having separate home and office buildings ranks pretty low imho.
Another way to look at this inefficiency is to imagine how much cheaper (and, on average, bigger for an individual) housing could be if we had no need for offices. The inability for the young people to buy their own place seems to be universal in (at least most of) developed world (Australia, Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, EU, NZ, Japan, urban China, ...).
The cultural impacts of that change are pretty interesting as well, though that sounds like a thesis topic to me.
I can definitely say that for us, going from a company which was 95% in the office to 95% remote, the culture has been negatively impacted. Productivity might be on par or even slightly up but overall I believe most people are less happy.
IRL meetings are important - but you don't need them 3 days per week. My team has found meeting once per month, or even once per quarter is highly effective. We get together all day, have plenty of whiteboards, and even some team games. We make it fun and productive. It has been working extremely well.
We even fly in the folks who are truly remote - they don't live in the same metro area or even the same state. It's still a lot cheaper and more energy efficient than commercial real estate.
Yea over here (Scandinavia) people started saving money by turning off aircon during the nights.
...which caused huge issues with moisture and air quality. The buildings were designed to have forced air circulation 24/7. Changing it to 12/5 just messed up everything.
There is a maximally efficient way to operate buildings when people are not in them. This is some function of building size, ambient air temperature and amount of time people will not be in the building (and probably other things). The key point is, unless the ambient air temperature is close to 20C, it is unlikely turning off heating / cooling completely is going to be maximally efficient.
In Atlanta if you turn off your A/C at 6pm you’re not going to be able to cool the building back down by the time the employees return in the morning. Reduce it a bit, sure, but it needs to be running 24/7.
It would be a better benefit to society to turn most of these office buildings into apartments.
Don't know where you live and work, but that's not the case for me. In most buildings I've worked in, aircon/heating switches off around 6pm. And I certainly don't leave my home heated while not in it.
Of everything wrong with modern society, the inefficiency of having separate home and office buildings ranks pretty low imho.