Ventilative cooling (VC) is widely used as a key element when designing a building to cope with overheating. This part focuses on the indoor climate aspects. However, the focus towards well-being, sustainability and energy use are now on the agenda in many countries. VC can, when designed correctly, tap into these three aspects and promote buildings with higher degree of well-being, be a part of the sustainability agenda and result in a reduced energy use. It should be noted that there to some extent is an overlap of the three mentioned aspects; well-being, sustainability and energy use.

VC can under the right conditions be a very good main alternative, supplementary solution to mechanical cooling systems.

Low energy buildings are highly insulated and airtight and therefore subject to overheating risks, where VC might be a relevant solution. VC is an application (distribution in time and space) of air flow rates to reduce cooling loads and overheating in spaces using outside air driven by natural, mechanical or hybrid ventilation strategies. Ventilative cooling reduces overheating in both existing and new buildings – being both a sustainable and energy efficient solution to improve indoor well-being, hereunder thermal comfort (State-of-the-art-review, Kolokotroni et al., 2015). VC is further an important topic supported by the International Energy Agency (IEA) – where the project, IEA Annex 62 Ventilative cooling had a special focus on this area finishing the project in 2018.

The purpose of this workshop is to evaluate and discuss how ventilative cooling is a mean to reduce overheating in buildings to achieve good well-being in ventilation related standards and legislation in the context of:

• Well-being
• Sustainability
• Energy

Generally, ventilative cooling is a good alternative to mechanical cooling in buildings, under the right conditions. To allow for VC to be treated better in standards both at the design stage, where initial calculations of e.g. the natural forces are made as well as, at more detailed stages where more detailed calculations are needed, it is important that several parameters are taken into account, such as (Status and recommendations for better implementation of ventilative cooling in standards, legislation and compliance tools, Plesner, 2018):

• Assessment of overheating, e.g.:
  • Utilizing thermal comfort indicators, including adaptive temperature sensation
  • Utilizing energy performance indicators
• Assessment of natural and mechanical ventilative cooling
• Assessment of night cooling
• Calculation methods that fairly treat natural ventilative cooling for determination of air flow rates including g. the dynamics of varying ventilation and the effects of location, area and control of openings