IEA EBC Annex 97 / Cities TCP Task 5 “Sustainable Cooling in Cities” an international research collaboration bringing together participants from more than 15 countries — entered its active working phase in January 2026. The Annex has established a cooperation with AIVC and venticool to broaden the reach of its research outcomes. Here is a short overview of the latest developments.

First Expert Meeting and Policy Workshop in Madrid

On 22 April 2026, Task 5 held a public policy workshop, “Policy in Practice: The Spanish Urban Perspective on Sustainable Cooling,” hosted at the Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja in Madrid and chaired by Aurora Monge Barrio (Universidad de Navarra) and Theofanis Psomas (Munster Technological University). The hybrid event attracted strong interest, drawing over 50 attendees and six speakers from Spanish ministries, the City of Madrid and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, industry, and green organisations — a clear signal of the engagement of national experts and stakeholders on urban cooling.

The workshop was followed by the first two-day Expert Meeting on 23–24 April. Among the outcomes: the project’s first major deliverable, the State-of-the-Art Report (SOTAR), is nearing completion; a biweekly online seminar series open to the public was launched (first session on 27 May 2026); and a dedicated working group on cooling solutions for the Global South was established.

A New Urban Cooling Database

A central new activity is the development of an Urban Cooling Database that will make the large body of research on urban cooling easier to access for practitioners, planners, and city authorities. The framework is currently being developed under the leadership of the team at Politecnico di Torino, while Aalborg University will host the database. It will be embedded in the official Task 5 / Annex 97 website, with tailored access for different audiences — a concise, accessible layer for practitioners and planners alongside more detailed technical records for researchers. Content will be populated throughout the project, starting with the material compiled in the SOTAR.

Coming Up: Policy Workshop and 2nd Expert Meeting in Cork

The next policy workshop and the second Expert Meeting will take place at Munster Technological University (MTU) in Cork, Ireland, from 28 to 30 October 2026. The accompanying policy seminar on 28 October will focus on indoor overheating in temperate oceanic climates — a topic of particular relevance to the ventilative cooling community — followed by a session on the latest Annex 97 research.

More information on Task 5 is available at annex97.iea-ebc.org and via the Annex 97 LinkedIn page.