Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Life quality disparity: Analysis of indoor comfort gaps for Chilean T

households
⁎
Miguel Becerraa, Alejandro Jereza, , Miguel Valenzuelaa, Hugo O. Garcésb, Rodrigo Demarcoa
a
Departamento de Industrias, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Av. España 1680, Casilla 110-V, Valparaíso, Chile
b
Computer Science Department, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Alonso de Ribera 2850, Concepción 4090541, Chile

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: According to the last report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Chile
Thermal comfort leads the iniquity ranking among the member countries. This inequality goes far beyond the income of a family
Indoor environment quality or the movement between social statements. This work attempts to appreciate this gap in the life quality of the
Social housing people, precisely in the context of the indoor environmental quality. The methodology involves the Predicted
Predicted percentage dissatisfied
Mean Vote (PMV) for measuring thermal comfort, using the Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) as di-
In-field continuous monitoring
mensionless index; and the CO2 concentration as indicated by the ASHRAE-55 standard. The sample involves 20
Socioeconomic inequality
households in the city of Santiago de Chile, distributed in 5 socioeconomically disparate communes. The
National Monitoring Network (RENAM) was used as database, from which information of indoor environmental
variables was obtained for 3 winter months. Based on the results, economic inequality is easily confirmed for
thermal comfort aspects. A significant difference is shown for the cluster with lowest income, which presented
the worst conditions. This difference is even more remarkable when the levels of CO2 are compared. Finally,
government policies should consider economic aspects in reducing the iniquity gap, jointly with air quality,
energy efficiency and thermal comfort of houses.

1. Introduction
Life quality is a critical dimension to quantify the development of a
nation. Measurement of life quality may integrate several variables,
such as water access, life expectancy at birth, electricity access, income
per capita, among others, which hinders the construction of a single
objective metric (Pasten and Santamarina, 2012). Recent studies have
found evidence of a correlation between energy consumption and
economic growth (Saidi et al., 2017; Osman et al., 2016), as well as
with human development (Pasten and Santamarina, 2012; Niu et al.,
2013), however these correlations are far from being completely un-
derstood. An interesting point of view in the analysis of the role of
energy into the life quality and the development of nations, is to con-
sider the quality of the available energy in terms of its consumption
efficiency, transportation, and conversion process. These factors can
have a negative impact on life quality from energy systems with high
levels of pollutant emissions and low efficiency, which might deterio-
rates the living conditions of people (Ray et al., 2016).
Energy sources used in Chile for heating vary by type and quality.
This is evidenced in the National Socioeconomic Characterization
survey (CASEN) from 2015, which found that for the capital city of
Santiago, 50.7% of the energy used for heating comes from gas (in the
form of natural gas and propane/butane mixture), 22.0% from kerosene
or petroleum, 11.1% from electricity, 4.2% from wood and its deriva-
tives, and finally 12.0% of the population has no heating source at all
(Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, 2016).
The same survey shows for low socioeconomic households, that the
primary source of heating is the cheapest available: firewood and ker-
osene, both of which have the highest level of pollutants in gas emis-
sions (Jones, 1999). Their combustion systems tend to produce more
carbon dioxide, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides,
in contrast to heating by electricity or natural gas (Arashidani et al.,
1996). The above implies decreased indoor air quality, and subse-
quently impacts the quality of life, in terms of indoor environmental
variables such as particulate matter, humidity and pollutants.
In 2010, Chile was introduced as a member of the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This organization
gathers a total of 34 developed and emerging countries (OECD, 2015),
where Chile and Mexico are the only Latin American representatives.
The acceptance of Chile in the OECD was the result of the economic
development in the last 25 years, where the average annual gross do-
mestic product (GDP) per capita growth was 4.04% between 1991 and

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: alejandro.jerez@alumnos.usm.cl (A. Jerez).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.06.010
Received 2 March 2018; Received in revised form 5 June 2018; Accepted 6 June 2018
Available online 27 June 2018
0301-4215/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Becerra et al.
2012 (The World Bank group, 2017). Nevertheless, there is evidence of
inequality gaps in different aspects of Chilean society, including those
found in: life expectancy (Tejada, 2016), access and coverage of health
services (Cabieses et al., 2015), school education (Claro et al., 2012),
air quality and green areas (Fernández and Wu, 2016). Using the Gini
coefficient to compare the inequality of wealth distribution, Chile has
the highest inequality value of Gini coefficient within OECD (0.465),
where the average value is 0.318 (Center for Opportunity and Equality
(COPE), 2016).
One of the symptoms of this inequality is seen in Chilean house-
holds, which are not exempt from the social gap reflected by the Gini
coefficient. There has been a significant increase in the social segre-
gation of urbanizations over time (Borsdorf and Hidalgo, 2008), in
addition to the rise in urban gentrification in Santiago López-Morales
(2016). Currently there is a significant difference in construction
quality, level of urbanization, and energy consumption for heating
between different socio-economic sectors in Santiago de Chile Borsdorf
et al. (2015). These factors present a potential for disparity in life
quality and comfort across different socio-economical levels.
Several authors have studied thermal comfort in low-income
housing to assess the life quality around the world. Pignatta et al.
analyzed the winter thermal comfort of houses in Cyprus, emphasizing
three different housing clusters according to socioeconomic income
(Pignatta et al., 2017). Vilches et al. proposed a building retrofitting
methodology (Vilches et al., 2017), which generates no energy nor
economic savings, but impact on the people's life quality. Escandón
et al. studied the simulated and measured thermal comfort in social
housing in southern Europe (Sánchez et al., 2017), who focused mainly
on energy consumption by evaluating simulations for thermal comfort.
Filippidou et al. studied energy efficiency measures applied to the non-
profit housing sector in the Netherlands (Filippidou et al., 2016), as
well as how fast energy efficiency has evolved in the stock of non-profit
housing in the Netherlands (Filippidou et al., 2017). The main differ-
ence between the studies mentioned previously compared to the Chi-
lean case is the higher economic inequality gap observed (Center for
Opportunity and Equality (COPE), 2016) and the extensive presence of
cheaper combustion heating systems based on firewood or kerosene
(Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, 2016). In this context, it is relevant to
analyze the impact of heating systems on the indoor air quality (Kelly
et al., 2016).
The aim of this work is to propose a methodology able to evaluate
the household life quality, in order to improve governmental policies
and reduce its disparity. The article is organized as follows: firstly, we
make the selection for the indoor thermal comfort model and establish
the key environmental variables (Section 2). A statistical description of
them is performed for different communes of Santiago de Chile, using
real data (Section 3). Then, the selected model is applied and results are
presented using different schemes in Section 4. The discussions are
addressed in Section 5, where recommendations for government policy
makers approaches are suggested. Finally, Section 6 presents the main
conclusions of the work and future researches guidelines are suggested.
2. Data
The information was obtained from the National Monitoring
Network (RENAM), an initiative led by the Ministry of Urban
Development (MINVU) and Fundación Chile (Ministerio de Vivienda y
Urbanismo, 2017). The data was recorded by the Monitoring System of
Environmental Variables (Sistema de Monitoreo de Variables Ambien-
tales in Spanish, SMVA), measuring variables in different cities of Chile.
The information registered is transferred to the main server, with a
temporal resolution of 30 min. Later, the data is made publicly avail-
able and can be found on the RENAM on-line platform (Fig. 1).
For the present study, Relative Humidity, Internal Temperature, and
Carbon Dioxide concentration data are used, and described as follows:
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Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201
Fig. 1. Diagram of operation of the monitoring system in homes.
• Relative Humidity (HR): represents the amount of existing moisture
in relation to the saturation humidity, expressed as a percentage. Its
importance lies in the influence on the thermal sensation.
• Ambient Air Temperature (T): represents a fundamental parameter,
because it has a strong influence on the thermal comfort of homes.
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2): indoor concentration of carbon dioxide, used
as a parameter to track the evolution of indoor environmental
quality. The measurements consider carbon dioxide volume con-
centration inside the homes.
With the available measurements, a methodology is presented to
determine the level of comfort in different dwellings in a set of selected
communes of the city of Santiago de Chile.
3. Methodology
In this study, houses from different communes in the city of
Santiago are analyzed based on the relative similar outdoor environ-
mental conditions due to geographical location proximity. In order to
characterize the existing socioeconomic gap, communes presenting a
clear stratification in the income level of its inhabitants are selected
(Garreton, 2017). The communes are grouped in three clusters, ac-
cording to their level of annual income per capita, where cluster A
corresponds to the highest income level and cluster C to the lowest
income level. The income level information is obtained from the CASEN
survey (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, 2016).
The characterization of the social gap is made based on the thermal
comfort measurements, which is related to the air quality. The former is
obtained using measurements of the indoor ambient temperature and
relative humidity, while the latter is analyzed through the CO2 levels;
however, these three variables have been shown to be strongly influ-
enced by the activity of the dwellings’ occupants (Szczurek et al., 2018).
A profile is compiled to observe the behavior of each variable from June
to August, to evaluate the life quality during the poorest environmental
conditions of the year in Chile, corresponding to the winter season. We
focus the analysis on this season in Santiago because of the following
reasons: (i) Predominance of environmental warnings product of an
elevated concentration of particulate matter released to the air
(Ministerio del Medio Ambiente de Chile, 2017), (ii) low temperatures
in winter (de Aeronautica Civil and de Chile, 2016), (iii) increased use
of residential heating systems versus air conditioners (AC) due to its low
cost (Schueftan et al., 2016).
Finally, a comparison was made between the variables according to
the commune in which the dwellings are located, and how they relate to
their economic income. The analysis of the measurements allows us to
understand how to approach government policies and understand
which variables to concentrate the efforts on, in order to reduce the
inequality gap in the quality of life in Chile.
3.1. Indoor thermal comfort
A relevant aspect in the people's life quality is thermal comfort
(World Health Organization and others, 2007), which is affected by
several variables, such as energy efficiency of dwelling, occupation
level, external weather, activity level and type of clothing of the persons
M. Becerra et al.
(Rupp et al., 2015). Also, thermal comfort is a subjective concept re-
garding the perception of people, which varies according to social,
cultural and economic factors (Schweiker and Wagner, 2015).
One of the most used methods in thermal comfort analysis is the
Predicted Mean Vote (PMV), developed by Fanger Fanger (1970). PMV
is featured by a quantitative approach to thermal comfort analysis,
which considers the balance of the physiological thermoregulation of
people in a closed environment. On the other hand, Adaptative Thermal
Comfort Model (Toe and Kubota, 2013; Nguyen et al., 2012; McCartney
and Nicol, 2002) has been introduced in recent years, preferred for hot
climatic environments where mechanical ventilation systems are in-
cluded, unlike the PMV-model, which is used for evaluation purposes in
cold climates (Djamila, 2017). Therefore, in this study the PMV-model
is used because the data corresponds to the winter season. The PMV-
model detailed in the ASHRAE 55 standard, which currently considers
six input parameters to obtain the indicator, are detailed below
(ASHRAE, 2014):
• Air temperature: In-situ measurement; the inner air temperature is
used, obtained from the RENAM database.
• Relative humidity: In-situ measurement; the inner relative hu-
midity of the air inside the dwelling is used, obtained from the
RENAM database.
• Air speed: Reference value for winter is 0.15 m / s , which is obtained
from tabulated data presented in ASHRAE standard (ASHRAE,
2014).
• Clothing insulation (Icl): Tabulated value from ASHRAE 55; a
suggested value of Icl = 0.9 is considered, corresponding to “trousers,
long sleeve shirt and suit jacket”.
• Metabolic rate (met): Tabulated value from ASHRAE 55; a sug-
gested value of met = 1.0 is considered, corresponding to “seated
quietly”.
Based on the calculation of PMV, ASHRAE 55 standard calculates a
dimensionless indicator of the level of thermal dissatisfaction, called
Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD), which represents the dis-
satisfaction degree of thermal comfort of a person, according to the
parameters that determine the PMV value on a scale of 5–100%. PPD is
calculated as presented in Eq. (1).
4 − 0.2179 PMV2)
PPD = 100−95·e (−0.03353 PMV (1)
Fig. 2 shows the graphic representation of PPD as a function of the
humidity ratio and the air temperature. The data reflects a strong
Fig. 2. Psychrometric chart of PPD for different air temperatures and humidity
ratio.
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Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201
influence from temperature variations on thermal comfort. Ad-
ditionally, it is observed that although the influence from humidity is
smaller, it must not been overseen.
When studying the thermal comfort, another important aspect to
consider is the access to the different energy sources. A recurrent
concept used to approach this idea is energy poverty. However, it has
not been defined a unique standard method to measure it: numerous
studies have highlighted this lack of agreement (Meyer et al., 2018;
Romero et al., 2018; Moore, 2012). Although, a conclusion is shared by
almost every author regarding that energy poverty is a multi-
dimensional problem (Aristondo and Onaindia, 2018; Okushima,
2017).
There are three indexes that are most widely used, which sometimes
are customized to obtain a more descriptive metric for a given situation.
The 10% indicator (Boardman, 1991) is recognized as the first to propose
an approach for measuring the concept. It is defined as follows: a house
is energy poor if it has to spend more than 10% of its income in fuel.
Nevertheless, this indicator is highly criticized in the literature for not
take into account the income level or the consumer's sensitivity to en-
ergy prices, have an unclear definition of “income”, etc. There are two
other recurring indicators in the literature used to address energy
poverty: Minimum Income Standard (MIS) (Moore, 2012), which con-
siders the net household income, the income required to cover basics
needs and housing costs; and Low Income High Cost (LIHC) indicator
(Hills, 2011), that establishes energy poverty when the income and
energy cost are below and over a couple of thresholds, being both de-
termine relatively. All these approaches consider mainly the income
level of a household and the related energy expenses.
In Chile, energy or fuel poverty is a rather new topic. Currently, the
work is centered on defining a suitable concept and a measurement
method (de Energía Programa, 2018). The main problem is the lack of
“single-source” data to get a valid description: CASEN survey is mainly
focused on the characterization of households conformation and in-
come levels, not considering expenses. On the other hand, there is the
“Family Budget Survey” (EPF, by its Spanish name) (Instituto Nacional
de Estadísticas, 2013), which accounts for the different expenses of
households. Unfortunately, the samples are geographically classifying
only by “Santiago” and “Other Regions”; this difficult the integration
and comparison of the data obtained by both surveys.
To the best knowledge of the authors, there is only one research
applied to Chile Pérez-Fargallo et al. (2018), which aims to establish a
methodology to estimate a risk index of fuel poverty for different so-
cioeconomic levels. This is accomplish by simulating various scenarios
based on parameters such as: climate conditions, size and form ratio of
houses, energy consumption, inflation rates and others. The Fuel Pov-
erty Index (FPI), is basically a reformulation of the mentioned 10%
metric. The improvement consists on incorporating the energy usage
behavior of inhabitants for determine the energy poverty level. The
study shows that lower income households present higher energy
poverty levels than higher income ones. Even worse, there is a lower
probability of decreasing energy poverty in low-income households. A
possible relationship between the levels of indoor thermal comfort and
the energy poverty can be deduced, although more research has to be
done prior to confirm this hypothesis. Given the complexity of carrying
out a study of the energy poverty for Chile, this will not be inside the
scope of the present work.
3.2. CO2 concentration
Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is measured based on different variables,
without uniformity in the methodology because of the large variety of
components that could be included (Wei et al., 2016). Air quality can be
subjectively measured through perception surveys, characterized by an easy
and cheap implementation, but it could be biased for identical conditions; on
the other hand, in-situ measurements provide accurate results but are often
expensive in implementation and analysis (Heinzerling et al., 2013).
M. Becerra et al. Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201

In particular, it has been established that appropriate uses of the

concentration of CO2 are the characterization of occupation patterns,
level of physical activity, levels of ventilation and estimation of the
occupant comfort respect to body odor (ASHRAE, 2012). In this con-
text, a model is established in the European Collaborative Action Report
where people dissatisfied with IAQ (in percentage) is calculated, based
on the carbon dioxide concentration (ECA, 1992). For this estimation
CO2, is considered as an indicator of the body odor and not of other
pollutants, as in Eq. (2). PD represents the percentage of dissatisfaction
with body odor and [CO2] is the concentration of carbon dioxide in
ppm inside, over the outside concentration.
−0.25 )
PD = 395·e (−15.15·[CO2] (2)

In general, indoor air quality is considered good if at least 80% of

people entering from abroad are satisfied with it, achieved if CO2 inside
is approximately 650 − 700 ppm over the external concentration of CO2,
under the assumption that the space is occupied by a sedentary adult
with average physical characteristics.
ASHRAE standard does not define a guideline for acceptable con-
centrations of indoor CO2 (ASHRAE, 2013). Moreover, in most cases,
they are only defined for industrial environments, most susceptible to
hazardous concentrations of CO2. However, the Canadian Guidelines
for Residential Air Quality (Federal-Provincial Advisory Committee on
Environmental and Occupational Health (Canada), 1989) establishes a
threshold of 3500 ppm of CO2 for indoor homes. In general, it is con-
sidered that the typical range of outdoor CO2 concentration varies be-
tween 300 and 500 ppm. It follows then, that an intuitive threshold of
indoor CO2 could be established as 1000 ppm inside a house, which is
the usual value used as reference in the literature.
The evolution of the indoor CO2 concentration can be used to in-
directly analyze the quality of different heating systems used to achieve
a certain level of indoor thermal comfort, where the amount of CO2
emitted tends to be higher in spaces with heaters with higher levels of
contamination, such as kerosene-based (Hanoune and Carteret, 2015)
or unvented gas-fired ones (Traynor et al., 1985), in contrast to the less
contaminating systems such as electric heaters (Fig. 4) (Arashidani
et al., 1996).
Fig. 3 shows a summary diagram of the input data processing
scheme, which is used to obtain the outputs described in the metho-
dology of the present work. In particular, the assumptions used consider
(1) the income levels of the homes obtained from CASEN 2015 have not
changed significantly in the last two years; (2) there are no considerable
differences in wind speed inside homes, clothing insulation and meta-
bolic rate between different clusters. This proposed assumptions allow
for an analysis focused on the measured variables of each dwelling, due
to a lack of detailed characterization of these parameters for the
Fig. 4. A maximum level of indoor concentration of CO2 after one hour of use
with different heaters technology. Type of heaters: (1) convection kerosene
heater, (2) reflection kerosene heater, (3) kerosene-fan heater, (4) town gas
heater, (5) propane gas heater and (6) electric heater. Redraw from Arashidani
et al. (1996).
dwellings in the sample. This is the main problem for similar studies in
underdeveloped countries, where there are few robust sources of in-
formation for a more detailed analysis, therefore this assumptions are
necessary. However,this methodology can be applied later to any
commune or city where these measurements are available .
4. Results
Data recorded from five selected communes in Santiago was ana-
lyzed (see Fig. 5), representing three different socio-economic segments
or clusters classified by income level: high (A), medium (B) and low (C).
First, a general statistical description for the air temperature, relative
humidity, and carbon dioxide is presented for each commune (sum-
marized in Table 1), where a brief analysis is carried out by the com-
parison between them. Additionally, Table 2 presents a characterization
of households by commune, which shows an evident difference in
building materials and people density for houses of cluster A in com-
parison to other cluster, where the square meters per capita is the most
notorious one.
Secondly, the best probability distribution for each consolidated
data sample is obtained. This is achieved through the implementation
of the software EasyFit (MathWave Technologies, 2017), which have

Fig. 3. Summary diagram of data processing methodology.

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Fig. 5. Map of selected communes of Santiago de Chile.

Table 1
Descriptive statistics of measurement variables for each commune.
Commune Income (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, 2016)) Social n Temp (°C) HR (%) CO2 (ppm)

(US$/person-year) Cluster Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Vitacura $24,322 A 12,757 18.87 1.63 56.2 6.3 697.8 320

Las Condes $21,003 A 20,449 18.05 2.10 53.9 6.8 667.6 344.7
Ñuñoa $13,525 B 38,569 16.96 2.67 60.8 9.8 898.6 618.3
Maipú $6,111 C 25,852 14.23 2.15 72.9 7.8 931.0 744.4
Puente Alto $5,123 C 29,463 14.82 2.53 67.1 8.2 1364.9 1342.4

Table 2
Finally, deeper analysis is made with the addition of this description.
Characterization of housing in selected communes Ministerio de Desarrollo As it can be seen in Table 1, each cluster is defined to represent a
Social (2016). different range of income level, and consisting of a similar sample size
of at least 30000 measurements. On a first analysis on the average
Commune Home size Wall Dwellers density
(m2) Material (m2/person)
temperatures, the wealthy communes have a difference of around 4 °C
with respect to the other communes. Same scenario is observed when
Vitacura 101–150 Reinforced concrete 34 the relative humidity is analyzed. Maipú presents a value greater than
Las Condes 101–150 Reinforced concrete 37 70% of relative humidity, more than 15% points than compared with
Ñuñoa 61–100 Bricks and Masonry 24
the Las Condes commune leading with the lowest relative humidity
Maipú 41–60 Masonry 19
Puente Alto 41–60 Masonry 17 conditions. Comparing to the CO2 concentration inside homes, we ob-
serve two relevant aspects: firstly, indoor concentrations have larger
values in less wealthy places. Secondly, the standard deviation also
been used for similar purposes in previous studies (Acquaye et al., increases in those cases. At this stage, the trend is clear: higher income
2011; Reilly et al., 2013; Nedaei et al., 2014). This software works by communes tend to have better indoor conditions than their poorer
applying a set of predetermined statistical distributions on the selected counterparts.
data, and rank them according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) sta- On a deeper analysis of the data, T (°C) and HR (%) presented in
tistic (Spanos, 1999). The relevance of these results are the simplicity Table 3 show a small SD value compared to the mean, which implies
for future researches to recreate real data by making a random simu- that T (°C) and HR (%) have a small variation with respect to its average
lation with the distributions and parameters provided in Table 3. value. In addition, T (°C) and HR (%) presents a skewness value slightly

Table 3
Descriptive statistics of measurement variables inside dwellings.
Variable Descriptive statistics Best fit K-S Test

Min Q1 Q2 Q3 Max Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis Distribution Statistic Range

T (°C) 5 14 16 19 31 16 2.9 − 0.086 2.63 Weibull 3P 0.0417 5.00

HR (%) 28 56 63 71 96 63 10.6 − 0.037 2.51 Beta 0.0243 3.00
CO2 (ppm) 10 479 646 1050 9000 957 855.7 2.677 10.71 Gamma 3P 0.2111 34.0

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negative, which implies that the longest tails are on their lowest values,
revealing that in most of the analyzed data the people are in a cold and
dry environment. Finally for T (°C) and HR (%), we have a platykurtic
kurtosis value more related to a distribution with heavy tails, which
implies that not very often T (°C) or HR (%) are far from the mean, as
showed in Figs. 6a and b.
On the other hand, CO2 (ppm) measurements presented in Table 3
show that mean and SD are very similar; this implies a variant behavior
of CO2 (ppm), suggesting very high peak values. Positive skewness and
high value of kurtosis implies that most of the data is concentrated
around the mean and its longest tail is on their highest values, verifying
the presence of high and not frequent peaks. Respect to the obtained
distributions for T (°C), HR (%) and CO2 (ppm), a Weibull distribution
for T (°C) is expected as for several natural phenomenon as tempera-
tures, precipitation, wind speed, wind power, among other variables in
meteorology and hydrology (Rinne, 2008). Furthermore, beta dis-
tribution obtained for HR (%) have the advantage of being more flex-
ible with respect to other symmetric distributions (i.e. Gaussian) and
can represent both leptokurtic and mesokurtic shapes, as previously
proposed in Price (2001) for statistical analysis of humidity. Finally for
CO2 (ppm), we verify that the gamma distribution represents the data,
which is expected for asymmetric variables with exponential decay and
concentrated on the left tail at the lowest values (Spanos, 1999).
Fig. 7 shows the thermal comfort behavior described in Section 3
from several points of view. On the first glance Fig. 7a shows daily
thermal comfort for all the analyzed clusters, where a large difference is
observed, with C cluster reporting a PPD of unsatisfactory thermal
comfort close to 100%. In general, the PPD decreases during the day,
presenting a peak in the morning, at around 8:00, and then it increases
during the night, presenting an abyss at around 21:00 h. In the case of
the cluster with the highest income (cluster A and B), the lowest un-
satisfactory index produces earlier, which is clearly evident in the case
of Vitacura.
In order to address the impact of the occupancy variation of people
in the indoor environment, and motivated by the increase in thermal
comfort seen at night time, a “family schedule” is defined, which covers
between 18:00–06:00, considering the period of time in which the
whole family stays in home, after school and work hours. In this con-
text, Figs. 7b to f show the evolution of the daily thermal comfort
during winter months, disaggregated by commune, and contrasting the
average thermal comfort of a daily profile with the average of the fa-
mily schedule defined as indicated above.
In general, low income communes (Maipú and Puente Alto) show an
small decrease in PPD, i.e., an increase in thermal comfort during the
family schedule, indicating the possible use of heaters during this
period, but without a significant impact on the measured inner tem-
perature, and thus in the thermal comfort of the family. On the other
hand, Ñuñoa and Las Condes, show a really similar behavior for both
time windows. This effect may be caused by better thermal isolation
and/or heating systems in higher income homes, which allows for a
more controlled indoor environment. This produces a consistent de-
crease in the PPD respect to the low income communes, which tend to
have homes with poor isolation, and use their heating systems only
when there are people at home. Only Vitacura shows a significant
variation in the PPD by considering the family schedule. This implies
the use of heaters and also much better isolation conditions in their
homes than the other communes, producing a measurable increase in
the thermal comfort in this case. Fig. 7 also shows that these behaviors
are maintained without significant variations during the complete
winter months.
Fig. 8 shows the analysis of indoor CO2 concentrations, in a daily
Fig. 6. Histograms and best fit distribution obtained for each of the used
variables.
basis and during the winter months. As seen in Fig. 8a, although all the

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Fig. 7. Thermal comfort data: (a) PPD comparison between selected communes on a daily basis; (b) to (f) PPD evolution during winter months for selected
communes, contrasting a daily average with the family schedule profile.

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Fig. 8. CO2 concentration data: (a) CO2 comparison between selected communes on a daily basis; (b) to (f) CO2 evolution during winter months for selected
communes, contrasting a daily average with the family schedule profile.

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series show similar evolution, only cluster A of highest incomes does
not exceed the threshold of 1000 ppm, meanwhile the communes of
Maipú and Ñuñoa exceeds this threshold during part of the family
schedule (approximately 40% of the time). On the other hand, Puente
Alto belonging to cluster C, exceeds the 1000 ppm concentration of CO2
during the whole of this period, surpassing the ppm threshold almost
80% of the day. In general, a peak of CO2 concentration is observed at
22:00 for all communities, but with different intensities: Ñuñoa barely
exceeded 1000 ppm, whereas Maipú and Puente Alto have excesses of
approximately 50% and 150% respectively.
One interesting aspect that it is observed in all communes studied is
the increase in the CO2 from around 16:00 to the peak at around 22: 00 .
This increase observed is consistent with the arrival of the family to
their home and the ignition of combustion dependent CO2-emitting
heaters, which is a common choice of heating in Chilean homes. This
increase is much intense in low income communes, where the com-
bustion heater are located inside the houses, while it is barely ob-
servable in the richer communes, where a closed heating system with
water boilers located outside the home are normally used. Significant
variations in the carbon dioxide accumulation rate are also observed
between each commune: cumulative rate for Las Condes and Vitacura
communes of 53 and 43.5 ppm/h, respectively; followed by Ñuñoa with
96.3 ppm/h, Maipú with 188.6 ppm/h and finally Puente Alto with
340.8 ppm/h, showing a clear trend of a higher accumulation rate for
lower income homes.
This not only contrasts the different technologies associated to the
heating of the home (in terms of their CO2 emission), but also put in
evidence the difference in size of the houses per number of inhabitant
with the different income levels analyzed. For the particular case of
Puente Alto two minor peaks are also observed, which can be related to
the ignition of the heaters at waking up given the low temperature
inside the home, and before midday for cooking.
Comparing the CO2 average during all day and during the family
schedule, we observe that CO2 measurements increase because of the
presence of the people after work and their activities inside their
homes. This increment is more evident at low income communes. When
comparing the communes of Las Condes and Vitacura (Figs. 8b and c)
they show a reduced average compared to the other communes, with
650 ppm relatively constant during the winter months. Ñuñoa has a
similar behavior, but with a higher average of approximately 1270 ppm
(Fig. 8d). In contrast, Maipú (Fig. 8e), presents a similar average con-
centration (approximately 1130 ppm), but with a higher variability.
Puente Alto presents the worst scenario, with high variability and an
average close to 1300 ppm (Fig. 8f). When analyzing the average family
hours, an increase in CO2 concentration is observed, where the com-
munes of Las Condes and Ñuñoa show the lowest increase with respect
to the daily average (67 and 93 ppm respectively), followed by Vitacura
with a 150 ppm increase. The lowest income communes present the
worst situation (cluster C), with an increase over 270 ppm with respect
to the daily average.
5. Discussion
Once the unfavorable situation concerning environmental quality
has been understood, focusing on the homes belonging to cluster C, it
becomes relevant to propose solutions and measures, or carry out some
recommendations around the observed results.
The improvement of thermal comfort can be done through the two
variables that influence the PPD indicator used in this study: inner
home temperature and relative humidity. Due to its bi-variable nature,
the relative sensitivity to each of its parameters must be identified to
define an efficient strategy to improve the conditions of thermal com-
fort in homes with the worst conditions, in this case, the ones that
belong to cluster C.
Fig. 9 presents the sensitivity of the variation in the PPD when
modifying the inner air temperature while keeping the HR constant and
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Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201
vice versa, according to the average values described in Table 1. The
results show that by varying the air temperature it is possible to reach
any value of the domain of PPD (Fig. 9a). On the other hand, in the
range of inner temperature observed, when trying to decrease the PPD
by increasing the relative humidity of the air, the improvement turns
out to be marginal. The condition of thermal comfort in the extreme
case of HR 100% could be obtained on average by a PPD of 96% for
Puente Alto and 98% for Maipú (Fig. 9b).
Due to values of PPD for the communes of cluster C, it seems that
the only reasonable alternative to improve the level of thermal comfort
is through increasing the indoor air temperature. For the decrease of
PPD value through the variation of relative humidity, the maximum
achieved is only 3% for cluster C. In this way, any direct or indirect
measure to improve the thermal comfort in a home should take the air
temperature as an improvement parameter. The alternatives for how to
achieve this can be diverse: for example, enhance the thermal insula-
tion of the house, as well as direct measures such as the implementation
of a heating system with higher capacity. In particular by increasing the
house insulation also allows the families to ventilate better the house,
given the less time it takes to heat it again. This, indirectly, should
produce a decrease in the relative humidity inside the home. Is im-
portant to mention at this point that a reduction in the relative hu-
midity might have a small impact on the PPD, but a significant effect
over the amount of moist condensed over the cold surfaces, like win-
dows and walls, which tend to increase the mold production and affect
the health of the families producing respiratory problems normally seen
in babies and elders, proliferation of allergies and the necessity to use
the public and/or private health programs.
On the other hand, regarding indoor CO2 concentrations, several
factors could be the cause of the differences evidenced between socio-
economic clusters, which can take part together or individually. Firstly,
there are factors related to the structural characteristics of the houses,
such as ventilation or available area for each person. Ventilation has a
direct impact on the air exchange rate, favoring the stagnation of the air
inside or allowing a correct renewal of the same. The latter facilitates
the entry of fresh air, the decrease of body odor, and the evacuation of
pollutants produced by the heating systems. The available area has an
impact on the accumulation rate of CO2, being higher if the available
area for each person is lower, accelerating the degradation of indoor air
quality.
Another factor that is evidenced by the concentration of carbon
dioxide is the quality of the heating systems used and their influence on
the air quality inside the house. Different heating systems have different
levels of CO2 emissions, influencing this variable, as shown by various
authors (Jones, 1999; Arashidani et al., 1996). The CO2 concentration
varies markedly among the different heating sources, where electric
heaters and systems with external combustion-dependent/electric boi-
lers and heat pumps are the heating systems with lowest internal
emissions; these allow to stay under the 1000 ppm concentration
threshold (Fig. 4). However, the poorer communes of the lowest in-
comes are using home heating systems with more polluting fuels and/or
heaters that release their flue gases inside the house. The above is
verified in the current study, where houses of cluster C use kerosene as
the most used energy source for home heating (Ministerio de Desarrollo
Social, 2016), normally used in portable heaters that do not have a
chimney to channel the combustion gases to the outside. This is cor-
roborated by the increase in relative humidity inside the house,
moisture that is released as a byproduct of combustion.
Some authors have proposed solutions for the indoor air renovation
issue. For example, intelligent systems of automatic ventilation for the
regulation of the concentration of CO2 have been developed (Guyot
et al., 2018; Ahmad et al., 2016). The implementation requires an op-
timization of specific variables, aimed to control simultaneously mul-
tiple parameters, such as: internal temperature, thermal comfort, en-
ergy efficiency, emissions of pollutants produced by the burned fuels for
heating, and the minimum fresh air required to dilute concentration of
M. Becerra et al.
Fig. 9. The sensitivity of PPD at variation of air temperature and humidity.
internal contaminants (such as CO or PM10) and odor. In addition,
(Patino and Siegel, 2018) have analyzed several common negative
characteristics in low-income buildings, where conditions of internal
environmental quality are unusual. The previous include low thermal
comfort and high concentration of internal contamination, which af-
fects negatively the health of the population.
Research shows that it can be established that measures to improve
indoor air quality conditions can cover any of the factors mentioned
above. However, given that a possible intervention of the house struc-
ture becomes more complicated due to costs or viability (for example,
the increase of ventilation or expansion of buildings may be unfeasible,
and require a considerable investment), the most attractive alternative
is the change of the home heating systems. This measure involves the
use of cleaner fuels or systems, exchanging kerosene to natural gas,
replacing portable combustion heaters to stationary units with an out-
side channeling for the combustion gases or using electric heaters. This
last example generates the greatest improvement, since its relative
emission rate is negligible, both in CO2 and pollutants; however, it
represents the most expensive heating source in Chile.
To implement the solutions outlined, several decisions could be
enacted by the central or local governments, which could promote and
support the improvements of the energy/thermal performance in
homes. This energy/thermal performance improvement would allow
the evolution, for example, towards more efficient and cleaner heating
systems, as well as the improvement of thermal characteristics. Chile
currently has state plans in these areas, which through subsidies allow
the enhancement of houses.
One of the solutions to be addressed has been the improvement of
the housing envelope. Currently, the Ministry of Housing and Urban
Development of Chile (MINVU) has carried out the program “Subsidy
for thermal conditioning of housing” (Vivienda, 2016), which focuses
on the reduction of heat losses and effects of condensation inside
homes. The target of this subsidy is social housing, which complies with
the profile of the houses in cluster C of this study, that can access the
approximate financing of USD $4500. However, the objective of the
subsidies is decreasing the energy required for heating, which does not
provide a direct solution to the problems of high indoor CO2 con-
centration identified in this study and does not aim to provide a cleaner
heating system.
Another solution currently in existence, managed by the Ministry of
Environment of Chile, is the “Heating Replacement Program” (del
Medio Ambiente, 2017) focused on the replacement of heating systems
that present a high level of intra-contamination in homes, by others
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Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201
more efficient and cleaner. Although this subsidy program has an im-
pact on the thermal comfort of homes, its primary objective is to reduce
environmental pollution from particulate matter, since it represents a
serious hazard to human health. This is reinforced knowing that is more
cost-effective to reduce emissions from residential sources than on the
industrial sector (Mardones and Saavedra, 2016).
Other examples of state solutions that address the issues of heating
systems or energy efficiency are the “Heating Subsidy” that provides
approximately USD $160 for the purchase of fuel for heating (Atiende,
2017). Special subsidies for reconditioning the houses within the “En-
vironmental Decontamination Plan” provides funds to improve the
thermal envelope of the house and implementation of clean energies
(del Medio Ambiente, 2017).
As can be seen, the existing state subsidy mechanisms present two
different approaches, which should not be exclusive: (1) improvement
of structural insulation to reduce house thermal losses and (2) reduction
on the inner and environmental impact of the home heating systems.
Improving the insulation of the homes allows a reduction of heat losses
but does not consider the problem of indoor air quality related to CO2
emissions or thermal comfort. Similarly, replacement of cheap and in-
efficient home heating systems has an exclusive environmental objec-
tive, which should be complemented with improvements of the thermal
insulation, in such a way that the consumption of energy for heating the
houses decreases.
The replacement of heating systems policy has benefited about
15000 homes, which represents a low level of coverage. If we compare
this coverage with the sector of “Bajos de Mena” located in the com-
mune of Puente Alto, having around 25000 social housing and 122
thousand inhabitants that satisfy the profile of the cluster C (Vivienda,
2012), the level of low coverage is evident. This shows us the dimension
of the problem of social housing in Chile, potentially in an unfavorable
situation of thermal comfort and air quality for the reasons presented in
this work. The above represents the challenge of extending the current
policies. Also, this extension is mandatory concerning the methodology
of this current study in other regions of the country, because issues
identified here, could present variations regarding the climate in dif-
ferent regions of the country.
Given the characteristics of the problems evidenced, policies should
be enacted, primarily focused on the life quality and comfort of the
people, aimed at improving the housing conditions of the communes or
sectors with minor income. Based on this, an integrated approach
should be considered in government policies, establishing synergy be-
tween existing subsidies or generating solutions that address the issues
M. Becerra et al.
Fig. 10. Factors for a comprehensive policy proposal to improve housing indoor
comfort and reducing life quality gaps.
of thermal comfort and air quality jointly. The key aspects on which this
type of policy should be constructed are proposed in Fig. 10, detailed
below:
• Economic: The policy must give a long-term sustainable solution,
mainly considering operational cost in which the beneficiary will
have to incur. This is important because now the main heating
source is firewood and kerosene for its low cost (Ministerio de
Desarrollo Social, 2016), so the proposed solutions must be designed
with competitive operational cost in mind, avoiding the return of
beneficiaries to the replaced systems.
• Energy Efficiency: Another important factor to be considered is the
energy efficiency improvement at the home. Although addressed
through policies from the MINVU, the development of synergies
with other government policies is needed, which will allow a re-
duction of the heating loads required for the acceptable level of
indoor thermal comfort. Another objective is lowering the costs of
heating systems replacement subsidies because of the need for a
lower capacity heating equipment.
• Air Quality: The solutions focused on enhancements to the thermal
envelope of houses do not affect directly the indoor air quality. It is
an integral part of the solution and interaction between the sub-
ventions must be applied because the policy must consider the im-
pact on a decrease of the indoor air pollution, for example, through
the use of cleaner fuels or heating system. This will have an ex-
tended impact, considering the benefits for the indoor and outdoor
environment.
•
Indoor Thermal Comfort: This represents the most critical di-
mension observed in the present work; in this area, the proposed
solutions in the public policies must aim to decrease the existing gap
by raising the indoor air temperature during the cold periods. An
analysis through the PPD indicates that controlling the relative
humidity within the household is a secondary measurement in the
thermal comfort, but which has not to be neglected from the ana-
lysis.
6. Conclusion and policy implications
This work shows the analysis of thermal comfort, through the esti-
mation of the Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfaction (PPD), and CO2
concentration in the interior of houses within a spectrum of different
socioeconomic clusters, all belonging to the city of Santiago de Chile.
Clearly, the results obtained show that economic inequality is reflected
in essential aspects of life quality within households, mainly through
thermal comfort. From this work, it is verified the evolution of thermal
comfort during the day, where all clusters present an improvement (a
decrease) in the PPD value in family hours respect to a 24 hrs analysis.
However, there is a significant difference in absolute terms, where the
communes belonging to the cluster with the lowest income present the
worst conditions.
This conclusion is even more evident when comparing the levels of
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Energy Policy 121 (2018) 190–201
CO2 inside homes. Although the most deprived neighborhoods actually
improve their thermal comfort during the family hours (showing a
decrease in the PDD), as well as in higher income sectors, the me-
chanism used for improving the thermal comfort is significantly dif-
ferent: the heating systems used in the cluster of lowest income reveal a
higher level of contamination, reducing the overall living comfort.
The related government policies currently being applied, are fo-
cused on the reduction of the inequalities presented here. These gov-
ernment policies have a focus on reducing the cost of heating systems,
for example, through the use of insulating materials in buildings, or are
aimed to improve environmental conditions inside and outside the
homes, through subsidies for fuel exchange to less polluting sources.
However, government policies should evolve and establish synergies
between different government subsidies to improve the thermal com-
fort within homes. In this way, the objectives of the current policies
should be combined, increasing their impact and effectiveness, through
a synergistic approach based on four pillars: Economy, Air Quality,
Energy Efficiency, and Indoor Thermal Comfort.
This work is presented as the first approximation and exploitation of
the monitoring system implemented by RENAM. In the future, when
more data and measurements are available, it will be possible to extend
the present methodology for a larger number of cities in Chile. Also,
implementing a model aimed to explain the energy consumption and
how it is related in the improvement of the thermal comfort is another
important derivation for the following researches.
Acknowledgments
Authors acknowledge to Fundación Chile for granting academic
access to RENAM database. Hugo O. Garcés acknowledges the financial
support of Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción by research
project DINREG 10/2017.
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