Thanks, I really enjoyed reading your answer! :-)
Now, in the question I was specifying that the aim would be to climb the same amount of steps in the same amount of time.
So when climbing two steps at a time you would change steps at half the frequency.
But it sounds like it will definitely take less energy than going up one step at a time.
Which begs the question, should staircases be designed with bigger steps? ;-)
This is excatly where Teh and Aziz study is interesting. They controlled for what you have asked in the question. They made people climb 11 stories, a total of 180 steps. They made sure that time taken by individuals in both single step and double step stride remains the same. To achieve this they made single stride individuals to take a step frequency of 100 steps/min and double stride individuals to take 50 steps per minute. Despite of this the single step method took 10% more oxygen than double step method. This shows that reducing the number of steps is perhaps not the only reason for single step method being more energy consuming.
Regarding design of staircase, now that idea might be great for young individuals. But for old people or people with knee problems or people with arthritis, it might make their life harder than it already is. Even for young individuals there will be a threshold for height per stair after which climbing it may become a tedious task. In order to keep staircase friendly for people of all age and size , it would be best to have the usual size staircase. Those who can , may consider a two step strategy on this staircase if they like.
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I think the main reason for single step being less efficient is friction.
Every time you step on the ground you loose most of the kinetic energy that pushes your leg towards the ground (you can see that your leg doesn't bounce up again like a rubber ball).
So when you hit the ground only half of the time you loose only half this energy. So taking double steps is more efficient.
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