Shifting the Gold-standard in Building Cooling: from Mechanical to Natural
Screenshot from a video for use in occupant focus groups
Project summary
Without an increase in energy efficiency, energy demand for space cooling will more than triple by 2050, consuming as much electricity as all of China and India today. Natural cooling, which uses the natural forces of wind and buoyancy to ventilate and cool a building, can provide a solution for this ‘cold crunch.’ However, despite significant potential for energy savings, natural cooling is not widely adopted. This lack of adoption is largely due to the implementation challenges of using state-of-the-art computational models and control systems to design for natural cooling.
This project, led by Prof. Catherine Gorlé, aims to better understand these implementation challenges and design solutions and policies to address them by working closely with three key stakeholders: occupants, building designers, and policy makers. The project team is focusing on the application of natural cooling in building stock in the San Francisco Bay Area, with an eye towards scaling the methods, design solutions, and policy recommendations developed for other regions and climates. We envision this project as the first step towards making natural cooling the gold-standard, where back-up mechanical cooling is only added when strictly needed.
Project Objectives
Develop human-centric natural cooling designs and control systems
Establish design guidelines and integrate advanced modeling tools into natural cooling design processes
Provide data and evidence to support the formulation of context-relevant policy, including standards and codes for natural cooling
Project team
Dr. Sneha Jain, Post-doctoral scholar, CEE
Juliet Ume-Ezeoke, PhD candidate, CEE
Dr. Themistoklis Vargiemezis, Post-doctoral scholar, CEE
Prof. Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, ESS
Nicholas Bachand, PhD candidate, CEE
Prof. Sarah Billington, CEE
Oluwapelumi Egujobi, PhD student, CEE
Prof. Catherine Gorlé, CEE
Prof. Rishee Jain, CEE