Using conventional fossil fuels causes both energy crisis and environmental pollution. Renewable energy with the merits of almost unlimited availability and environmental-friendliness provides a perfect solution to the problem. Solar energy is widely recognized as one of the most important renewable energy resources due to its even distribution, safety and serving as sources for others. In past decades, global solar thermal capacity increases rapidly and now it has been widely used worldwide to provide heating and cooling. To understand the current progress of relevant technologies and the future development, this paper briefly summarizes the current situation of solar heating and cooling, and then some new achievements in related areas and potential future market penetration are discussed. It is found that solar hot water heating system's development is in fast lane in recent years with evacuated tube solar collector dominating the mass market. How to integrate solar collecting system with different types of buildings is the main research and development direction for solar building heating system. Large-scale district water heating system and solar PVT system as the most promising solutions attract extensive attentions. For solar cooling, efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of conventional solar thermal cooling methods in terms of adsorption and absorption technology. In addition to technical development, economic analysis of solar heating and cooling system is also discussed. Return of investment period is widely adopted to evaluate the economic performance. Results reveal that low initial cost and advantageous allowance are the most efficient ways to make solar heating and cooling system economically attractive. This paper is presented and recommended by 5th International Conference on Nuclear and Renewable Energy Resources. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.