ISH Frankfurt 2009, the year’s largest exhibition of industrial achievement in air-conditioning technology and renewable energies for buildings,  will take  place from 10 -14th of March in Germany and is the 50th anniversary of the fair. The trade fair will host 2400 manufacturers who will exhibit  their products. The exhibition centre was already fully booked in January this year. The Air-conditioning forum appears  for the third time at the conference and will touch on current themes in building service engineering and focus on larger industrial air conditioners, rather than home-based portable air conditioners.

Air-conditioning and heating systems were at the centre of a study done by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The study  suggests that operating buildings more energy efficiently could have health and safety benefits, as well as financial and environmental advantages. The researchers on the project, Mark Mendell and Anna Mirer, analysed data from 95 air conditioned offices in the Unites States that was originally collected by the Environmental Protection Agency. The  temperature and humidity in offices were  measured and office workers were asked to fill out a questionnaire to determine the different levels of comfort in summer and winter. The study found that many occupants were too cold in summer and that a proportion of the offices were too warm in winter  owing to the overuse of heating and cooling systems.