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:
Develop stable and reliable compact thermal energy storages
The IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme has redoubled its efforts to develop and test compact thermal energy storage (CTES), saying the technology can play an important role in transforming the energy market. At its meeting in June, the IEA SHC Executive Committee approved the start of a new research …
Workflow stories describe use of solar neighbourhood planning tools
Experts working on the Solar Neighborhood Planning project have created workflow stories to find out which tools urban planners use and what problems they encounter while doing so. The image above is taken from a Norwegian workflow story. It shows a simulation of sunlight patterns during morning hours in a …
Solar Heat Worldwide 2021 – a rich source of global, national and sector-specific data
In 2020, Germany was the world’s leading solar district heating market, while China saw the largest increase in the number of industrial solar heat systems added in a single country, according to Solar Heat Worldwide 2021. This year’s edition, presented last week during a Solar Academy webinar that drew more …
German university offers new tool to display factory heat loads
To simplify the design of industrial solar heat systems in Europe, the German University of Kassel has developed an Excel tool that can be used to create standardised heat load profiles in multiple industrial subsectors. The amount of heat that industrial businesses use each day is a very important factor …
New chair for IEA SHC Programme on growth path
The new Chair of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme, also known as IEA SHC, is Tomas Olejniczak, an all-around energy transition and renewable energy expert at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. He was elected for a 2-year term during …
New SDH factsheet database goes online
The IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme has just launched a database containing a substantial number of fact sheets about solar district heating technologies, best practices and markets. The 29 documents were written by the most experienced SDH researchers and practitioners from China and Europe, who collaborated on the four-year …
Europe holds top spot for SHIP incentives
Spain has recently launched an investment grant scheme focused on industrial solar heat, joining an already long list of European countries – including Austria, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands – that have created similar programmes. In the last three months of 2020, Spain’s regions then submitted tenders for clean …
SBE21 conference spotlights historic NZEBs
The SBE21 Heritage conference in mid-April involved a deep exchange of ideas between researchers, architects and practitioners about how to reduce the energy consumption of historic buildings while retaining their aesthetic features and cultural significance. The main contributors to the three-day conference, organised by Italian-based Eurac Research, were the experts …
How to design an 85 % solar-heated and 100 % solar air-conditioned house
During an online meeting from 1 to 2 July, the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling programme will launch a new global research platform called Task 66 Solar Energy Buildings. The researchers participating in the new task intend to develop and popularise a building standard focused on solar energy as the …
Water-energy nexus in wastewater management
Solar-powered water treatment can significantly reduce industrial manufacturers’ water and energy footprints and turn municipal water treatment plants into energy distributors. An example of this, a demo plant in Spain producing renewably sourced hydrogen and oxygen from wastewater, was presented by Christoph Brunner, chair of IEA SHC Task 62 – …
Improving the efficiency of SDH
Since the end of IEA SHC Task 55 – Large Solar District Heating and Cooling Systems last December, there have been multiple calls for continuing the work of this successful research platform in some fashion. In response, Viktor Unterberger, a senior researcher at the Austrian BEST – Bioenergy and Sustainable …
PV-Thermal: Major markets and most sought-after technologies
IEA SHC Task 60, Application of PVT Collectors, shows how a fruitful collaboration between industry and research can lead to a thorough analysis of current and future technological developments. Besides developing a series of standardised key performance indicators to assess the technical and environmental benefits of PVT, the group used …
