EU

In November 2015, the Executive Committee of the  International Energy Agency Energy in Buildings and Communities (IEA EBC) programme approved Annex 68 “Indoor Air quality Design and Control in Low Energy Residential Buildings” for a four years working and reporting phase. The project will be investigating how to ensure that future low energy buildings are able both to improve their energy performance and to provide comfortable and healthy indoor environments.

The two main objectives for the project are:

The IEA EBC Annex 62 report: “Ventilative Cooling. State-of-The-Art Review” has just been released.

The QUALICHeCK-TightVent webinar: “Building airtightness and initiatives to improve the quality of the works” will be held on Tuesday 12 January, 10:00-11:30 (Brussels time). The objective of this webinar is to give background information on selected initiatives to improve the quality of the works with respect to building airtightness.

The programme includes 4 presentations of 15 minutes as follows:

The principal objective of this webinar series is to give the status, needs, and perspectives on developments to consider ventilative cooling in energy performance assessment methods in several countries. This first webinar will focus on the developments in Austria, Denmark and France.

We are very pleased to welcome the UK as new AIVC country. 

The venticool platform paper: “Overview of provisions for ventilative cooling within 8 European building energy performance regulations” is now available online. This study aimed to focus on regulatory measures taken or missing regarding ventilative cooling in several countries, which could either inspire developments in other countries or point out specific problems for the market uptake of this technology.

Please click here to download and read the full paper.

The Indoor Environmental Quality Global alliance (http://ieq-ga.net/) organised its first sessions at the June 2015 ASHRAE Annual conference. The sessions present a holistic approach to indoor environmental quality and give information on different societies' activities to improve the indoor environment. To access the presentations and audio files of the sessions follow the links provided:

Ventilation and air infiltration into buildings represent a substantial energy demand which can account for between 25% to over 50% of a building's total space heating (or cooling) needs. Unnecessary or excessive air change can therefore have an important impact on global energy use. On the other hand insufficient ventilation may result in poor indoor air quality, with consequential health problems, or poor thermal comfort. Designing for optimum ventilation performance is hence a vital part of building design.

AIVC is preparing a Technote on Residential Ventilation and Health. The Technote is now under review by the AIVC. Providing good indoor air quality to home occupants can have a substantial impact on occupant health and ventilation is a key tool for achieving that goal.

The Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) newsletter carries regular reports of energy policy development and research activities taking place in various countries. It contains updates on ongoing and planned research projects, features new publications and website information, as well as topical articles of a general nature. It is intended for those active in fields relating to operational energy saving for buildings and communities.

The EBC news Issue 61, June 2015 contains the following articles: