This report summarizes the work of the initial working phase of IEA ECB Annex 62 Ventilative Cooling and is based on the findings in the participating countries. The report is an official Annex report that describes the state-of-the-art ventilative cooling potentials and limitations, its consideration in current energy performance regulations, available building components and control strategies and analysis methods and tools.

This summary report presents insights on recommendations into how ventilative cooling is integrated in EN standards, ISO standards, national standards, national legislation and national compliance tools. The information presented derives from feedback by IEA EBC Annex 62 experts of 11 countries (see Table 1) who have completed a questionnaire. This gives a high level of insight into the current status, and thereby the recommendations to be given on the basis of this knowledge.

Overheating in buildings is an emerging challenge at the design stage and during operation. This is due to a number of reasons including high performance standards to reduce heating demand by high insulation levels and restriction of infiltration in heating dominated climatic regions; the occurrence of higher external temperatures during the cooling season due to changing climate and urban climate not usually considered at the design stage; and changes in internal heat gains during operation are not factored in the design.

Examples of well documented case studies that use ventilative cooling (VC) to reduce the energy demand for cooling or overheating risk in new and refurbished buildings are valuable to the energy in buildings community. This report and associated brochures contains such examples and provides details on the design, control, operation and performance of the VC systems. The report aggregates and summarises all 15 case study buildings collected in subtask C of IEAEBC Annex 62.