Influence of outdoor air pollution on European residential ventilative cooling potential

Residential ventilative cooling via natural ventilation is influenced by outdoor air pollution. However, relative to climate, outdoor air pollution is not comprehensively considered in determining the ventilative cooling potential of buildings. To assess the impact of outdoor air pollution on ventilative cooling potential, we coupled a longitudinal dataset of five outdoor air pollutants from 26 European cities with building energy simulations. We explored the importance of climate, five outdoor air pollutants, urbanization level (Urban vs Suburban), and proximity to traffic (Traffic vs Background). We found that ventilative cooling remains an effective strategy for passive cooling, as it was able to reduce the cooling demand by 17-100% depending on local climate and air pollution. Urban air pollution reduced the ventilative cooling potential across Europe on average by 24%. The reduction varied within cities - 13% for Suburban Background, 24% for Urban Background, 19% for Suburban Traffic, and 44% for Urban Traffic locations. PM2.5 and PM10 were the main limiting factors for the ventilative cooling in all location types, whereas O3 and NO2 were critical in the Background and Traffic locations accordingly. These results can be utilized by building designers, operators and other stakeholders to maximize the application of ventilative cooling in buildings.