The IEA SHC Programme has just launched the call for nominations for the Solar Award 2024. This year the programme will recognize an outstanding project or programme that has reduced costs and environmental impact by providing solar thermal heating or cooling to an industrial process or several processes. The nomination may be from an individual business, business consortium, regional, provincial or national entity, or an associated entity (e.g. developer, designer, builder). Nominations need to be submitted online by 15 April 2024. The 2024 Award will be presented during the EuroSun 2024 conference from August 26 to 30 in Limassol, Cyprus. The award recipient will also receive free conference registration and a travel stipend.
The IEA SHC Solar Award has been awarded for substantial achievements in the solar heating and cooling sector worldwide for more than 20 years, most recently every two years. All previous award winners are listed online. The winner in 2022 was the ORVI Social Housing Project in Namibia with solar water heaters on 58 project buildings, which demonstrates that affordable living and ecological standards can work hand-in-hand.
Again this year, an international panel of judges from the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme will review all the nominations and select the winner. The award ceremony will take place during the EuroSun 2024 conference in August. Beforehand, a shortlist of the top nominations will be published on the IEA SHC website and on solarthermalworld.org.
The jury will assess the following aspects
- Effectiveness of the solar heating and/or cooling project in reducing the costs and environmental impact of providing heating or cooling in an industrial process or processes.
- Measurable impact in terms of conventional energy and cost savings, and CO2 reduction
- Effective promotion as an exemplary project to encourage replication.
Nominating an individual or organization is easy via the online submission form. The application includes answering the following questions:
- Description of programme/project
- Description of key outcomes/results
- Why is it deserving of this award?
- Other relevant information about the delivery consortium, financial approaches and sustainability of the project.
Applicants can come from all over the world, without geographical restrictions.
IEA SHC is co-organizer of EuroSun 2024 together with the International Solar Energy Society (ISES). The conference’s focus is on heat supply for buildings and industry and covers a broad range of topics such as solar process heat, solar district heating, thermal energy storage, solar thermal cooling and solar energy transition. It takes place every two years at different locations in Europe. EuroSun 2022 gathered 480 solar experts from more than 50 countries in Kassel Germany in September 2022.
