A propane stove and air intake are “active” systems.

It is now possible to build homes in cold winter climates that have a near zero heating bill. (I am not familiar with application in warm climates.)

There is no reason to ever build another home that requires an active heating system and an huge monthly heating bill.

What is a Passive House? “Passive” refers to a house that does not require and active heating system. The house is designed and carefully constructed to a level of energy efficiency that eliminates the need for an active heating system. The $$$ saved by eliminating the heating system are invested in improved envelope, insulation and window quality. The $$$ saved in heating bills go into the owner’s pocket.

Elements of a passive house include:

envelope, envelope, envelope: The building envelope is carefully constructed to eliminate all air leakage and minimize thermal bridging.

insulation: R40 Walls, R70 attic

window: R7, triple pane, coatings reflect infrared heat back into the house, no glazing on north walls

passive solar with carefully designed ratio of glazing to floor area and sufficient heat sink to store the solar energy.

low energy appliances including induction cooktop.

Active heating system is a small (30,000btu propane) “fireplace”. House is expected to require less than 50 gallons of propane to heat in a climate where typical home uses in excess of 1000 gallons of fuel oil.

Air to air, balanced heat recovery system. A house this tight has almost zero air infiltration and gets stuffy rapidly. A small (less than 100 watt) air exchanger exhausts stale air and distributes fresh air while recycling 70% of the heat that would would otherwise be exhausted.

After future addition of photovoltaic panels we expect this house to be a NET ZERO ENERGY house.

Construction cost less than $200 per square foot.

I also recommend the Wikipedia Passive House page. It has links to many other useful sources.

Unfortunetly I know these come at great cost, and I fear this could price people out of the housing market. Great work is required to incorporate all this technology and yet be cost effective and comparable to normal construction techniques.

Driving more fuel efficient cars however is a no brainer, I do not understand why americans have such a problem with light small engined cars, I drive a 1000kg 1.8 litre car, it does 0-60mph in 7 seconds and has a top speed of 145mph, yet I can get 35mpg out of it easily on the motorway and its solid enought to protect me in a crash

Rentals are frequently the worst offenders with old and degenerate doors, windows, appliances, light fixtures, and HVAC units. I don’t see why they shouldn’t be required to meet minimal standards of energy efficiency.

We have LEED Platinum buildings that don’t meet energy code, as a study released last year by USGBC noted. The study concluded: “energy performance displays a large degree of scatter”. And Energy Star homes are hitting only half their projected reduction goals, on average, per a study by Michael Blasnik.

THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM.

So it’s great to get the standards tightened – but how do we actually build to them and actually achieve the required reductions!!?!?!?!????

The #1 impediment toward achieving these reductions has been the lack of a sophisticated and clear design/construction methodology for hitting dramatic energy cuts.

Until now…..

The PASSIVE HOUSE energy building standard and methodology closes the loop and can deliver up to and even surpass 90% heating and cooling energy savings NOW.

Developed in Germany in the 1990’s, over 15,000 buildings have been built around the world to this exacting standard. It has been tested and verified with the E.U.’s CEPHEUS program in 2000 and 2001.

Passive House is not a style or a building type.

Passive House is:
1. focused on being ECONOMICALLY AFFORDABLE (under 10% upcharge and 5 to 8 year payback – it avoids costly renewable systems such as PV, wind and geothermal, concentrating on what is essential to building, the thermal envelop and ventilation systems)
2. focused on HIGH COMFORT LEVELS (the highest interior air-quality and thermal comfort levels around today)
3. focused on PREDICTABILITY (with the Passive House Planning Package, the most sophisticated energy modeling of its kind today, mandatory blower door testing and rigorous review by PHIUS and certification – the buildings relentlessly meet or the goals.)

We should be going to 90% reductions today.
With Passive House, 90% reductions are affordable, doable and predictable.

Our imperative should be to make Passive House standards building code ASAP.

Find out more about Passive House at:
http://www.passivehouse.us
and
http://www.passivehouse.com

The Passive House approach, I think, qualifies as a “core climate solution”.

While far, far too many architectural critics and journalists still treat visual aesthetics as an independent and paramount consideration, not all do. At ArchWeek, though we are a general architecture magazine and not a green specialist publication, we try to include sustainability considerations in every building feature article. We’re proud to count Ed Mazria among our authors, to cover the relationship of building and the global climate crisis on a frequent basis, and of course it is our great pleasure to include Climate Progress in our design-and-building-related blog center.

Habitat for Humanity builds affordable and energy efficient. I’m hosting a 21st century energy forum on June 23rd in Chicago at the Beverly Arts Center. One of the speakers will be David Tracy, executive director of Habitat in the south suburbs. We’ll also have experts on residential geothermal and retrofit foam insulation.

According to Mazria, “By the year 2035, approximately three-quarters (75%) of the built environment will be either new or renovated.” If we don’t make this work, we will have completely failed and Earth 2100 will be here.

Wes Rolley
CoChair, EcoAction Committee, Green Party US

This is why we need to accompany improved building code laws with better building code enforcement and “upstream” education. Building energy codes need to be ingrained in the minds of building design architects and building development engineers.

Sure, we simply must build more energy efficient buildings and homes, but as someone who has actually had to create something while adhering to the building codes I know two things:

1) Legislators start with good intentions when they set out to add new rules to the building code, but as with any sausage-making political process, what actually ends up in the code often tends to be overly-complicated, overly-expensive and something that in fact does not do the intended job or get the desired effect as well as something more simple and less expensive. I offer the current version of Waxman-Markey as a perfect example.

2) The minute something gets required by the building code — even if it is a good regulation and something that should be required — the price of that something jumps through the roof.

And building affordable housing is already a nightmare in the U.S. — actually it’s a bad joke. Aside from the good work of Habitat for Humanity, no one and no agency is really building truly affordable housing in this country anymore. Part of the reason is the effect of all the revisions to the building code, most of which have added cost but not really added much more efficiency, value or safety.

So, if we are going to add all these new rules and requirements to the building code there has to be a very solid, well-reviewed process for taking the politics and philosophy out of the proceedings and make it only about what really works and makes sense. And you have to put some kind of price-controls on the new stuff you are requiring so that rampant price-gouging doesn’t occur and drive the cost of construction even higher than it is already. Manufacturers and suppliers should not be handed a bunch of new windfall profits because they can now sell something for 4 or 5 times what it used to go for just because “now the code says you *must” have this or do that.”

This may be an impossible task, but there must be a serious attempt to tackle it in order to try to ensure that most of the new requirements make sense and don’t produce opportunities for price-gouging. The devil is in the details.