Australia recorded its all-time hottest day on Monday, 7th January (40.33°C average across the continent). In Sydney, a maximum over 41°C yesterday put the buildings to the test. For those using the Buildings Alive platform, the operators' responsive management meant energy peaks were kept under control and on average they performed better than expected for such a sizzling day.

Here are some hot fashion tips for summer, and for office workers they might make shedding a few kilos so much easier…

Is it sensible, or realistic, to push the envelope ever further in the pursuit of greater indoor thermal comfort, and at what cost? If we succeed, will it make us happier? On returning from an international conference grappling with these issues it seems there is still a lot of work to do in balancing energy consumption with providing a building comfort level that goes unnoticed.

Complaints about office building air conditioning surge every weekday morning. Does this reflect serious thermal comfort and productivity concerns? Or could it be that most of us would just rather be somewhere else?

An analysis of 500 million Tweets showed most of us are happiest each weekday at 8am and our mood steadily declines until we’re heading for home in the afternoon. The study published in Science also concluded that people feel generally more positive heading into summer and we’re happier on weekends after a sleep in. However, the buildings complaints database containing 59,494 requests from occupants of buildings logged between July 2008 and yesterday shows people are most irritated by their temperature late morning and we complain less at hometime. Do the two studies contradict each other? What's going on? What can we do to respond for building energy efficiency?

The ultimate adaptive building with features like a moveable skin or a sweat response in high humidity is still a way off, though it appears from our portfolio wide trials that using more dynamic temperature setpoints in existing buildings is a good early step to more responsive building management.

The goal isn't efficiency, it's resource productivity...

GreenBuild Expo was in Toronto this year, the largest gathering of green buildings professionals in the world. We presented a number of lessons learnt from our work with Green Buildings Alive and experiences with the Investa portfolio, and noted where performance management and data are an emerging theme of discussions. Questions and comments are welcome.

Monash University's Energy and Water Manager, Dr Rob Brimblecombe, reports from their campus in South Eastern Australia. A year of data shows that temperature setpoints can be 2 degrees higher in summer, keeping people comfortable and saving energy.

I’m just back from the Property Council of Australia’s annual Congress in Darwin, a city renowned for its laidback lifestyle and great weather. But I had to wonder, what will climate change and a carbon price mean for the future of cold beer and air conditioning at the Top End?

The Bureau of Meteorology says the heatwave that afflicted Australia’s eastern seaboard last month was an all-time record. What effect did this have on our buildings?

The University of New South Wales Sustainability website now publishes our energy use, depicting the electricity usage of key buildings on campus in real time. This guest post from UNSW's Sustainability Director, Aaron Magner shows how they did it.

Most large office buildings try to keep internal air temperatures hovering around 21.5°C in winter and 22.5°C in summer. They do it because the leases require it. But is that in the best interests of the occupants? We’re not sure. With record high temperatures all over Australia this summer we’ve been calculating a shirt-to-jacket ratio as a way to investigate the connections between tenants clothes choices, building management, comfort and energy use. We count the jacket and shirt wearers twice a day, every day, in three large Sydney office buildings.

This insight shows the greenhouse emissions intensity in kg of carbon-dioxide-equivalent, per square metre for 53 Australian Buildings. Looks a bit like tangled spaghetti? Find out how to decipher the graphs...

Here is our first insight and we would love to hear your views! This example shows the monthly averages for energy and gas use between 2003 and 2010 for 53 commercial buildings in six Australian cities.