The 8th International Cold Climate HVAC Conference (Cold Climate 2015)

The international Cold Climate conference is a series conference initiated by the Scandinavian Federation of Heating, Ventilation, and Sanitary Engineering Associations (SCANVAC) in 1994. The 8th International Cold Climate HVAC Conference (Cold Climate 2015) was held from October 21st to 23rd, 2015 in the seaside city of Dalian, China, organized by Dalian University of Technology, Tsinghua University and Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). The theme of this conference was sustainable buildings and the energy utilization in cold climate. There were approximately 180 attendees at the conference. The participants came from three continents (Europe, North America, and Asia), and 13 countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, German, Russia, Mongoalia, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the United States, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and China), representing 70 different universities and institutions around the world. The conference received 179 full paper submissions, and 145 of them were ultimately accepted. There were 113 papers communicated by oral presentation and 18 by posters. The best articles were published in few selected journals.

In cold climates, the needs of heating and ventilation are important for occupants to achieve a desired indoor climate. During last decade, tremendous efforts has been made to develop and to promote the sustainable heating and ventilation technologies in the cold climate. However, cooking and heating with biomass and coal is associated with a significant global health burden. Household air pollution (HAP) and ambient air pollution (AAP) due to emissions resulting from using biomass and coal are estimated to cause about one million premature deaths annually in China alone (Liao et al. 2016). A study published in journal, The Lancet Neurology, revealed that about 30% of disability associated with stroke (15 million death globally) is linked to air pollution, which is especially high in developing countries compared to that of developed countries, at 33.7% and 10.2%, respectively (Feigin et al. 2016). The use of solid and biomass fuels in poor and no-ventilation situations is worrisome as the attributed smoke has been associated with a variety of cancers, the most notable being lung cancer (Hosgood and Lan 2014).

The main theme of this topical issue is heat pump and ventilation technology. In this topical issue, 14 extended articles recommended by the Cold Climate 2015 Organising and Scientific Committees are included, as an overall representation of the efforts of promoting sustainable heating and ventilation technologies in cold climates. The selected articles cover: air tightness and air infiltration of buildings, low temperature heating, radiant–convective air conditioning terminal device, phase change material, human thermal adaptation, seawater-source heat pumps, adsorption heat pumps, moisture buffering, district heating networks, and surface-line-point energy planning. These articles discussed several key issues to achieve a desired indoor climate by using sustainable heating and ventilation technologies in the cold climate.

The next cold climate conference 2018 will be in Kiruna, Sweden (http://www.swegonairacademy.com/2016/04/28/cold-climate-hvac-2018-kiruna-sweden/), and we sincerely hope more engineers, designers, consultants, entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, and policy makers working in the fields of ventilation, indoor air quality, and heat pumps may attend to exchange ideas on improving the indoor environment in cold climate.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude and thanks to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Dr. Reinhard Radermacher, for his great effort to publish this special issue. We wish to thank Mrs. Mary E. Collins Baugher, Managing Editor, for her very effective support during the review process.