venticool is an international platform formed in 2012 focusing on ventilative cooling issues, with the overall goal to "mobilize the ventilative cooling potential in terms of energy conservation, health, and comfort". Within this platform ventilative cooling refers to the use of ventilation strategies to cool indoor spaces. The most common technique is the use of increased ventilation airflow rates but other technologies may be considered as well. The creation of the platform was triggered by increasing concerns for overheating risks and thermal comfort in low-energy buildings, while ventilative cooling strategies remain poorly considered in building regulations and scarcely well-implemented in practice. These concerns are reinforced in particular by the 2020 objectives of the European Union and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The platform’s main activities focus on communication, networking and awareness raising. They include the organization of events: conferences, workshops and webinars, as well as the production of publications: papers, reports, guidebooks etc.
venticool & IEA EBC Annex 62
venticool is the key partner in the communication and dissemination activities of the Annex 62 ‘ventilative cooling’ research project of the ‘Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme ’ of the International Energy Agency, an international collaborative project on ventilative cooling with a four-year working phase. The main aim of Annex 62 was to make ventilative cooling an attractive and energy efficient cooling solution to avoid overheating in both new and renovated buildings. venticool also cooperates with the IEA-EBC’s Annex 5: “Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre ”, which aims to provide reliable reference information on research and development in the fields of air infiltration and ventilation.
History
The international platform for ventilative cooling- venticool was inaugurated in October 2012 during the 33rd AIVC Conference in Copenhagen. The platform is facilitated by the International Network for Information on Ventilation and Energy Performance- INIVE EEIG, which is a registered European Economic Interest Grouping whose members include building research centres in Europe. Since then, the platform has been financially and/or technically supported by its partners: AGORIA-naventa, , and . venticool also collaborates with organizations that hold significant experience and/or are well identified in the field of ventilation and thermal comfort, like AIVC, and REHVA.
Target group
The target group of venticool ranges from European, national and regional government policy makers, stakeholders’ organizations, designers, engineers, builders, HVAC installers to research, technical and training centres.
Newsletter
venticool publishes a newsletter twice a year with information on the latest developments on ventilative cooling including policy issues, events, innovative concepts, standardization, case studies and research activities.
Events
Annual Conference. Since 2013, venticool holds a joint annual conference together with the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre and the TightVent Europe platform in September/October in one of the AIVC participating countries, with a track devoted to ventilative cooling. At the 2012 AIVC Conference, the following topical sessions were organized:
At the 2019 conference, the following topical sessions were organized:
Better implementation of ventilative cooling in national building standards, legislation and compliance tools
EBC Annex 80- Resilient Cooling
Workshops & Webinars. venticool also organizes workshops and webinars focused on specific topics in relevance to ventilative cooling and/or current work developed by the IEA EBC Annex 62.