International Energy Agency’sSolarHeatingandCoolingProgramme
The IEA Solar Heating and Cooling (SHC) Programme has over 35 years of international collaborative work in the field of research, development, demonstration (RD&D) and test methods for solar thermal energy and solar buildings. The results of this work are available for researchers, policy makers, industry, utility and business representatives, builders, architects and teachers
The IEA SHC Programme is a member-based Programme with 20 member countries and 5 member organizations. Its mission is “To enhance collective knowledge and application of solar heating and cooling through international collaboration to fulfill its vision of solar thermal energy meeting 50% of low temperature heating and cooling demand by 2050.”
Highlighted in the section below are some of our most recent publications:
More than a third of the newly installed collector area in 2021 globally was thermosiphon systems. They dominate sales in many Asian and Latin American countries. The IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme’s Task 69, “Solar Hot Water for 2030” is investigating performance and failure modes to provide the technology …
The Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) wants to support the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme with life cycle analysis of solar water heaters. During the last meeting of IEA SHC Task 69 on Solar Hot Water for 2030 in April 2023 Harald Kicker from the Institute of Polymeric Materials …
The term “climate neutral” is omnipresent today. But there is no generally accepted official definition of climate neutrality. Instead there are three definitions that have different impacts on the assessment of residential solar-energy-based systems. Harald Drück, Chair of IEA SHC Task 66 Solar Energy Buildings, calls these three approaches: virtual, …
Solar Heat Worldwide 2023 reports mixed growth for solar thermal. While solar thermal markets grew, particularly in Europe, the global market was overshadowed by declines in the two largest markets, China and India. As a result, the global new solar heat capacity in 2022 contracted by 9.3% compared to 2021, …
Dr Lucio Mesquita from Natural Resources Canada will chair the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (IEA SHC) for the next two years. He was elected during an Executive Committee meeting in June in France (see photo). Mesquita (marked with the red arrow on the photo) already supported the former …
Standardized, modular interfaces for the integration of solar heat into factories can reduce solar heat system costs significantly. The photo shows such a prefabricated so-called balance of plant (BoP) before being shipped to Turnhout in Belgium to connect a 2.5 MW parabolic trough collector field with a chemical factory. The …
Among the 6,000 cities and towns in Europe with district heating, 266 already feed solar heat into their grid. For municipalities that plan to expand and develop new district heating systems to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels the IEA SHC Task 68 team has developed a solar district heating …
The Danish solar district heating sector is a role model for the world. Researchers from IEA SHC Task 68 Efficient Solar District Heating met in the Danish capital Copenhagen for a project meeting and visited two innovative solar district heating examples. he first visit was to the concentrating solar heat …
Over the last decade the South African solar thermal market has stagnated at around 140,000 m2 of newly installed collector area annually. On the one hand, South Africa is the largest national solar thermal market on the African continent. On the other hand, this is a surprisingly low volume in …
The IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (IEA SHC) recommends the factor of 0.7 kWth per square metre of aperture collector area for the conversion of area to power for statistics on concentrating collectors. This is an important step for international market statistics about new solar heat capacities. So far, …
GSCN and the Solergy label are continuing to grow together. More than a year ago, the Global Solar Certification Network and the Solar Heating Initiative, which developed the Solergy label, agreed to cooperate. In the recent IEA SHC Academy webinar the two initiatives gave an update on the expansion of …
How can urban planners secure the right to light and the right to solar access when densifying urban areas? Experts from Norway and Sweden discussed the challenges using various examples during the international seminar Solar and daylight planning in urban environments on 10 March 2023. Both countries lack requirements regarding …
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