This paper presents school climate assemblies, conceived as an innovative educational tool for the co-creation of climate change and sustainability solutions in educational institutions and communities. It describes an intervention research project that builds on previous processes and experiences of climate citizen assemblies which have been organised in different countries across the world. School climate assemblies are conceived of as a tool that promotes the active engagement of pupils and their communities in co-creating climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies towards jointly defining innovative sustainability and climate change solutions. An intervention, piloted in five secondary schools in the Spanish region of Tarragona, is reported, presenting the main phases and steps followed. To test the effectiveness of the intervention, this paper outlines the policy climate change recommendations that emerged from the co-creation process to identify and agree on a set of actions to tackle climate change and sustainability challenges and the degree of student satisfaction with the intervention. A detailed methodology for organising school climate assemblies that can be replicated in other educational institutions, contexts and regions, is presented, enabling the widespread adoption of this innovative approach. The study emphasises the potential of co-creation methods in the educational context and underscores the critical role of education in fostering sustainability in citizens and empowering students to become active change agents in their local communities. The results lead to policy implications for integrating co-creation approaches into school curricula worldwide, aiming to empower students and drive sustainability action.

Air-conditioning demand, especially in hot and humid climates, causes most of the energy consumption in buildings. In these applications, the latent load often constitutes a significant part of the total load. Conventional air-conditioning systems deal with the required dehumidification by cooling the moist air below its dew point and reheat it later to increase its temperature to comfortable supply conditions. By using solid/liquid desiccant systems, which absorb humidity from the air, it becomes unnecessary to reach the dew point to dehumidify, thereby reducing energy consumption. In liquid desiccant systems, dehumidification occurs in the absorber, where the humidity of the air is absorbed by direct contact with a desiccant. Most of the previous liquid desiccant system studies have used adiabatic absorbers, where the solution must be cooled externally before being delivered into the air-solution contactor. However, based on experience with closed-cycle absorption systems, internally cooled absorbers are expected to yield better performance considering that a cool solution temperature throughout the absorber will maintain a constant and low vapor pressure. This article presents an experimental study of two different internally cooled air-solution contactors using falling-film tubular heat exchangers: The tubes in one are made of titanium and in the other of high-density poly ethylene. The experiments have been conducted in a liquid desiccant system under summer conditions in the Mediterranean city of Haifa, Israel. A performance comparison is also carried out with an externally cooled air-solution contactor, using results obtained from previous studies.

The aim of this study is to analyze the feasibility of the single-effect H₂O/LiBr absorption heat pump cycle to produce combined heating and cooling. To achieve this, first, the main changes that the absorption cycle requires are described in comparison with the conventional single-effect absorption chiller. Then, the cycle’s operational limits in terms of temperature lift and LiBr crystallization are evaluated. In this sense, driving heat temperatures required for these applications range from 85 °C to 120 °C. The energy and exergy performance (in terms of cooling and heating capacities, cooling and heating coefficient of performance, and exergy coefficient of performance) of the cycle is theoretically studied for five different types of applications that require simultaneous heating and cooling: building air conditioning, a 4th generation district heating and cooling network, a sports center with an indoor swimming pool, a hybrid air conditioning system with an absorption heat pump and a desiccant evaporative cooling system, and simultaneous cooling and water purification application for coastal areas. The system performance in terms of the cooling coefficient of performance varies in the range of 0.812–0.842, in terms of heating coefficient of performance from 0.58 to 1.842, and in terms of exergy coefficient of performance from 0.451 to 0.667. The application with the highest exergy coefficient of performance is the 4th generation district heating and cooling network.