Occupants use windows to control their thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ). However, occupants often have to make a compromise between thermal, acoustic and visual comfort, IAQ and energy use for space conditioning. Moreover, they are not only looking for good indoor environmental quality, but also for their needs for security and privacy.

Ventilative cooling emerges to be a key element in the strategy to meet the cooling demand in buildings while cutting the CO2 emissions. Ventilative cooling also enhances thermal comfort and mitigates heat stress in buildings. Despite these benefits, the practical adoption of ventilative cooling remains limited among designers. There is still a need for design guidelines and assessment methods in standard weather conditions, extreme scenarios (such as heat waves) and urban environments.

IEA Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) research projects are examining building energy codes, exploring data utilization for improving energy efficiency, and investigating air cleaning technologies.

In this webinar, we addressed the opportunities offered by smart ventilation strategies, which include a wide range of systems depending on the type of sensing parameters (CO2, humidity, occupancy, etc.), the type of sensing combinations, the type of installation (centralized/decentralized), the types of control algorithms, etc. We also quantified their potential from and energy and IAQ point of view based on existing and newly developed assessment framework in the annex.

The current development in building energy efficiency towards nZEB buildings represents a number of new challenges to design and construction. One of these major challenges is the increased need for cooling in these highly insulated and airtight buildings, which is not only present in the summer period but also in the shoulder seasons and in offices even in midwinter. Resilient ventilative cooling can be an energy efficient solution to address this cooling challenge in buildings.