Workshops

Background: High-temperature heat pumps have a considerable potential for decarbonizing industrial process heating by electrification and energy efficiency making them a key-technology in the sustainability strategy towards 2030 of various companies. While high-temperature heat pumps supplying above 100 °C are increasingly available, the number of demonstration cases remain limited. Nevertheless, the number of good examples continuously grow increasing awareness and know-how while yielding further competitive efficiencies and lower costs for future projects.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: To exploit the massive potential of high-temperature heat pumps for industrial applications, a variety of stakeholders must collaborate by:

• Develop and demonstrate a variety of high-temperature heat pump technologies
• Conceptualize and implement commercially viable integration projects
• Master the transition from fossil fuel-based heating systems towards heat pump-based heating systems

This workshop will bring together the key stakeholders from technology suppliers, end-users, policy makers and R&D organizations in order to create a common understanding of the technology’s potential and the required actions to propel more successful projects into the industrial sector.

Organiser: Benjamin Zühlsdorf, Danish Technological Institute

About the workshop, purpose and objective: The objective of this workshop is to collect and compare international perspectives on the relevance and development of heat pumps for hydrogen production and carbon dioxide capture. Through structured discussion and exchange, the workshop aims to assess the current importance of the topic across different countries and application areas, evaluate how its relevance is expected to evolve over the next five years, identify the availability and maturity of products currently on the market, explore technologies and solutions in the development pipeline, map ongoing and planned projects at national and international level, and review the role of existing and upcoming funding programmes in supporting deployment.

The workshop seeks to create a shared understanding of the state of play and to identify priority areas for research, industrial development and policy action.

Organiser: Veronika Wilk, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

Background: Budgets for the 1.5 °C climate protection target may be reached in the next years, which requires a fast reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The building sector is key for emission reduction in many countries. Heat pumps are seen as the future HVAC system, so the integration of heat pumps in the urban energy systems is an important future task. Positive energy districts (PED) are highly ambitious concepts to accelerate the urban energy transition. Heat pumps with their unique features of a high energy performance and the option to transform electric surplus in heating and cooling energy are a core technology for highly performant cluster of buildings and districts. 

About the workshop, purpose and objective: The workshop will introduce the HPT Project 61 (former Annex 61) and the state of PED and presents results of heat pump integration in high performance cluster of buildings and districts, which is followed by an interactive panel discussion. The audience is asked to exchange their experiences, demo cases and challenges to reach high energy performance in an urban context and discuss open questions as well as necessary steps for an accelerated urban energy transition both in new buildings and in the built environment.

Organiser: Carsten Wemhöner, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST) 

Background and Rationale: Cities across Europe and worldwide are under increasing pressure to develop municipal heat plans and deliver tangible progress towards climate neutrality. Heat pumps—ranging from individual building solutions to large-scale systems—play a crucial role in the decarbonisation of urban heating and cooling.
However, cities and the heat pump community (research, industry, planners, solution providers) often operate with different expectations, timelines, and technical vocabularies. This workshop aims to bridge these gaps by jointly exploring needs, barriers, system approaches, and opportunities for collaboration.

As the IEA Heat Pump Conference focuses on innovation-driven decarbonisation, this workshop connects the technological capabilities of the heat pump sector with the strategic requirements of urban transition processes.

Aims Workshop: The workshop aims to:

• Clarify what cities need from the heat pump community in order to implement effective and robust municipal heat planning (e.g. data, methods, system solutions, integration options, support structures).
• Highlight what the heat pump community needs from cities to deploy heat pumps at scale, particularly in dense urban areas (e.g. regulatory support, available urban heat sources, access to public space, coordination processes).
• Present selected city perspectives (e.g. Vienna and an international municipality) to illustrate concrete challenges and boundary conditions for heat pump deployment in urban contexts.
• Identify system-level challenges and opportunities, such as micro-grid approaches, combined heating/cooling solutions, or urban waste heat utilisation.
• Encourage interactive dialogue between innovators, solution providers, strategic decision-makers, and urban stakeholders through World Café discussions.
• Define potential fields of future cooperation between the IEA Heat Pump TCP, the IEA Cities TCP, cities, and industry partners.

Organiser: Ingo Leusbrock, AEE INTEC

Background: Heat pump deployment in multi-family buildings (MFBs) remains limited despite proven technical feasibility, with adoption rates typically below 20% even in new constructions across Europe. The heterogeneous nature of apartment buildings—with varying layouts, sizes, and heating infrastructure—permits a wide range of heat pump solutions but often necessitates highly individualized system designs, hindering large-scale deployment. The IEA HPT Annexes 50 and 62 have developed a comprehensive classification framework of 13 system configurations and compiled a database of nearly 100 real-world case studies across 16 countries to bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical implementation.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: This interactive workshop bridges the gap between theoretical heat pump concepts and real-world implementation in multi-family buildings. Participants will work in diverse stakeholder groups to analyze case studies from IEA Annex 62's database, developing practical solutions for reference buildings through a structured "solution game." Groups will present their approaches and compare them with actual implementations from the case study database. The workshop concludes with a presentation of overall findings from Annex 62, including lessons learned, success factors, and barriers identified across different building types and system configurations.

Organiser: Marek Miara, Fraunhofer ISE

Background: With all of the effort being made around the world towards heat pump development, from research groups to legislators to OEMs, a consolidation and summary of the state of the art and best practices would bring all stakeholders further forward. Furthermore, a common heat pump design concept, platform, and basis protocol would help to reduce the barrier to entry as well as to increase the efficiency of resulting components and systems. Along the same lines, a platform to share steady-state and transient data from laboratory and field measurements would significantly improve the ability of designers and modelers to validate and improve their simulations, thus improving both the rate and quality of heat pump development.

Implementing heat pumps that are designed for use with low-GWP refrigerants addresses these challenges in terms of both direct and indirect CO2 emissions. The primary aim of HPT Project 66 is to increase the interpretability and accessibility of best design and control practices, experimental data and simulation tools for residential heat pumps to increase their implementation around the world.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: This workshop would serve as an in-person mid-point meeting (~18 months from start date of Oct. 2024) for IEA HPT Project 66: “Optimal Heat Pump Design and Operation: An International Collection of Common Techniques to Accelerate Broader Acceptance”. The purpose of the meeting would be to discuss the collected state-of-the-art for design and control of heat pumps collected in Tasks 1 and 2 of Project 66 and exchange ideas on consolidation of concepts, including nuances, from international partners to effectively communicate these best practices. Furthermore, progress on the collection and interpretation of experimental data and open-source simulation programs as part of Tasks 3 and 4 will be discussed and feedback collected. 

This in-person meeting will provide invaluable feedback for the second half of the IEA HPT Project 66 to maximize the utility that project stakeholders and the heat pump community as a whole obtain from the project. The significant number of members and relevant stakeholders that will be in-person in Vienna at the conference make this workshop a fantastic opportunity to engage project stakeholders in person.

Organiser: Riley Barta, Purdue University and Christian Vering, RWTH Aachen

Background: Heat Pumps are a corner stone in the energy transition. To reach energy and climate goals more than 50 % of buildings should be heated with heat pumps in 2050 according to IEA Net Zero by 2050 scenario. The technology is energy-efficient, secure, flexible and climate friendly. Transition and massive change of technical systems in a non-mature market is a journey with barriers to overcome. Barriers including policies, administrative burdens, affordability issues, lack of skills and information and user centric questions like trust and knowledge.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: The workshop will include updates about different initiatives aiming at accelerating heat pump deployment going on in different parts of the world, as well as findings from user related research. We will combine presentations, oral interventions, panel discussions and dialogue in breakout sessions. The overall idea is to share knowledge and identify important areas for collaboration to find solutions for existing barriers.

Organiser: Heat Pump Centre

Background: Space cooling is now the fastest growing source of energy demand from the buildings sector. The largest growth is expected in emerging and developing economies. However, due to climate change heat waves occur more frequently and are an increasing challenge also in moderate climates. Cooling-driven peaks in electricity consumption can put electricity affordability and reliability at risk, especially if efficient technologies are not in place to dampen the effects on energy systems.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: The workshop will focus on affordable and efficient cooling and dehumidification solutions based on a modular, simulation-driven concept using natural refrigerants. Its main objective is to define the focus and scope of potential international collaboration projects within HPT TCP. 
The workshop will examine challenges and needs across different applications, regions and economic contexts, and will enable an exchange of experiences while gathering input from a wide range of stakeholders. The agenda will include presentations, oral interventions, panel discussions and dialogues in breakout sessions. 

Organiser: Heat Pump Centre in collaboration with Zhaw-team from Switzerland

Background: HFC refrigerants are being phased down or phased out in line with the Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol, and (in Europe) with the F-gas directive. This will lead to an increased use of flammable refrigerants, a trend which is already obvious in Europe. While this change will decrease the risks to the global environment, it can also lead to increased risks to the immediate environment around the installation. Producers of heat pumps, as well as legislators and other decision makers are trying to find methods of keeping the risks with flammable refrigerants at a reasonable level. At this workshop, topics related to these risks and possible solutions will be discussed.

About the workshop, purpose and objective: At the workshop, we will get short introductions to a number of topics related to the safety using flammable refrigerants. We will then divide into smaller groups and discuss the questions initially presented. Finally, all participants will gather and share the most important outcomes of the discussions. The purpose of the workshop is to share information amongst the participants, and to, through the discussions, determine what information is lacking (topics for new research) and what needs to be done to allow safe use of flammable refrigerants. 

Organiser: Björn Palm, KTH 

About the workshop, purpose and objective: This workshop aims to identify and discuss the main barriers to applying circular economy principles in the domestic heat pump sector. Participants will include both project members from IEA HPT Project 65 and invited external experts and stakeholders. The goal is to share experiences, highlight challenges and opportunities, and explore possible solutions together. This workshop supports international collaboration and encourages broader engagement in the transition to more sustainable practices for heat pumps.

Organiser: Marie Fischer, ISE Fraunhofer and Karl-Anders Weiß, ISE Fraunhofer