International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme
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:
“Solar thermal is uniquely positioned to support low-carbon economies”
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 …
Cost reduction potential through prefabricated and standardized balance of plants
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 …
Solar district heating info package for cities and towns
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 …
Innovations in the front-running solar district heating country Denmark
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 …
Spotlight on the South African solar thermal market
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 …
IEA SHC recommends conversion factor 0.7 kWth/m2 for statistics on concentrating collectors
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, …
Certification and labelling of new collector types
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 …
Paving the way for solar access in Sweden and Norway
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 …
Webinars in March offer insights into certification, labelling and the rise of SDH
Do not miss out the two solar heat webinars in March offered by the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme together with partners. You can join the next IEA SHC Solar Academy webinar about the Global Solar Certification Network and Solergy either on 21 March or 23 March depending on …
Low-carbon and high-comfort integrated lighting
Anyone interested in research in the field of efficient lighting in buildings will definitely come across Jan de Boer. He chairs the Lighting Technology and Passive Solar Systems Group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany. Since 2013, de Boer has also led groups of scientists and practitioners …
Business and financing models – a clear distinction
Non-technical barriers often play a critical role when it comes to increasing the number of solar cooling systems in the sunbelt countries. Business and financing models are among the important factors in overcoming non-technical barriers. In order to have an informed discussion about successful models it is important to have …
IEA SHC investigates cost reduction potential of solar district heating
Transparency about costs makes claims more credible and helps energy modellers. For these reasons the IEA SHC Task 68 on Efficient Solar District Heating (SDH) has started a discussion about cost reduction potential of SDH systems. “We aim at performing the cost analysis based on interviews with representatives of industry …
