Passive House Seeks Broader Appeal

From the Journal of Light Construction

The Passive House concept is an approach to energy-efficient building that - compared with conventional code-compliant construction - reduces energy use for heating and cooling by up to 90 percent. The "passive" part of the name is meant to emphasize that those savings are achieved through passive heat gain, building-envelope efficiency, and high levels of insulation, rather than through "active" strategies like on-site power generation or collection and storage of solar heat. While quite popular in northern Europe - particularly in Germany, where it was developed during the 1990s - the method has only recently drawn much attention from designers, builders, and homeowners in North America.

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