Cold comfort in a high carbon society?

It is now obvious that technology and society co-evolve. This should lead to increasing collaboration between social scientists and engineers in fields such as buildings. Yet engineering insights still have hegemony over building practices and the setting of standards. This paper considers how the insights from the recent Building Research Information 2008 special issue titled 'Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society' might be applied in the building sector and in associated policy-making processes. It concludes that economics, the dominant discipline in the policy world, tells us that there is a huge prize to be gained in terms of reducing carbon emissions in the built environment, but that it does not provide many clues about the practical steps needed to secure the prize. Social science insights could be critical here. Specifically, it is argued that social science can increase one's understanding of the ways in which needs and demand for comfort are created. It can help design regulatory processes that build in visions of a lower carbon society from the start. It also provides the insight that high-level policy-makers must send coherent signals to regulators and practitioners to avoid the low carbon building agenda coming into conflict with other policy goals.