Passive House Standards: the Minimum for Housing Now

In this Climate Emergency, Passive House is the Minimum Building Standard, according to the United Nations.

The latest International Panel on Climate Change report states it is ‘now or never’ if the world is to stave off climate disaster. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists, in what is in effect their final warning.

Canada has committed to 40 – 45% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. The price on carbon is scaled to rise over the next 8 years. How can we make the cost of housing more affordable and still meet our climate targets?

“Passive House standards are the minimum for new housing now,” says Scott Foster, Director of the United Nations Sustainable Energy Program in Geneva. “That’s what I’ve been hammering on the most. 40% of greenhouse gases globally come from the energy buildings consume. Those can almost be eliminated if we build the built environment right.”

A key pillar of Foster’s sustainable energy platform is the High-Performance Building Initiative, where he is developing a UN protocol that can be adopted globally. “My vision of high-performance building begins with Passive House, but it goes much further. If we continue to build the traditional type of housing we do now, we will be repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again.”?

Canada is in a housing crisis. The federal government has committed to building twice as many homes as we do now – up to 200,000 per year. According to Scott Foster, these must be high-performance homes. There is no other option.

“Build once. Build right,” Deborah Byrne, Director of Passive House design at Kearns Mancini Architects (KMAI), agrees. “Passive house can be the baseline to all other building targets. It responds to the need to be less energy reliant; it is climate resilient; it is affordable; it is durable.”

Jonathan Kearns, Founding Principal of Kearns Mancini Architects Inc., goes even further, “Not only is Passive House a better way to build, but it should also be the only way we are permitted to build.”

He should know. Kearns Mancini has been constantly innovating and collectively working on Passive House since 2009. They are Ontario’s leading Passive House architects.

“When I look at what’s happening on the planet,” Foster continues, “with temperatures rising, climate changing, what’s happening to species - this a species existential threat that we face. We are thirty minutes past midnight on the climate doomsday clock. We are way late in responding.”

The UN has developed a series of actions for the right way to address the climate issue. High-performance buildings are number one on the list. As Foster says, “If we start with improving the built environment, plus two other initiatives – reducing methane and better managing resource extraction - we could solve this. We could change the trajectory of climate change and move the dial within 5 years. That’s how prominent those three actions are.”

Byrne believes that we’ve already missed our moment to reduce our impact on climate. Now we need to focus on adaptability and resiliency to keep people safe. Conventional buildings can no longer do that. High-performance should be conventional.

Kearns Mancini knows that building Passive House results in increased simplicity: a massively insulated, thermally broken airtight envelope; triple-glazed airtight windows; optimized orientation to catch southern solar energy; mechanical ventilation energy recovery; and optimized functional design.

“A Passive House design allows for the building to heat and cool itself most of the time,” says Jonathan Kearns, “providing significant occupant comfort for 90 percent less energy compared to conventional building methods. In a Passive House, you can sit next to a window in the dead of winter and not feel a draft, and then sit next to that same window at the height of summer and not feel overheated.”

What stands in the way? Fast housing is like fast fashion – poorly made and disposable. But reaching for fast solutions leads us down this rabbit hole, leaving the real issues of affordability out of sight and out of mind.

Affordability refers to the cost of buying a home, but what about the affordability of keeping the home? Energy costs are rising; severe weather is taking its toll. We need to build climate resilient homes.

Whoa! That sounds like higher costs. Things are already expensive. Are you adding extra features to a basic Chevrolet home, hoping for a Cadillac? Wouldn’t that make it unaffordable??

It does not require fancy tech to operate effectively or to offset excessive energy use.

- Deborah Byrne

“What is fancy about it?” Byrne takes umbrage at the thought, “It is dumb simple, low tech and uses materials we already use. Yes, the materials and components are of the highest quality, but we need less active equipment, and it costs less to run and maintain. It does not require fancy tech to operate effectively or to offset excessive energy use. I think most people, if asked, would want a science-based approach to building rather than a rule of thumb approach. You want to know your car will perform in line with the science used to engineer it. Why not your house?”

“We have a builder in Ireland who has been in the business for years,” cites Foster, “he has switched over to building high-performance affordable housing and is proud to be part of this effort. He saw almost no difference in cost building new to high standards than the old standards. It is a false argument that it’s more expensive.

“And if you think about the running cost of the building over its lifetime, the cost savings are extraordinary. If you take it out 20 years, it’s much cheaper to have a high-performance building.”

Foster likes the term ‘high-performance building’ rather than Passive House, because, well, from a marketing standpoint wouldn’t you rather have a high-performance building than a passive one? But we are talking about the same thing here.

“Our High-Performance Building Initiative starts,” Foster points out, “as most people should, with the envelope - a highly insulated, airtight envelope, twice as insulated as conventional builds. And if you get the building material right, the design right and construction perfect, you achieve 15 kWh/m2/ year – the Passive House standard.”

That results in occupants having to pay one-tenth the cost of energy services compared to a conventional home – 10% - or rather they save 90% on their energy bills. What is not to like?

In Ireland, Foster was able to visit a bunch of high-performance affordable homes and interview some of the occupants. What did they say??

“People were ecstatic!” glowed Foster, “Their energy bills had gone through the floor – a really important affordability issue. There were no drafts. A homogenous temperature. They didn’t need to touch anything. They were comfortable as soon as they got in the door.”

Their experience is a testament to not only affordability but to a huge improvement in the quality of life. People live better in high-performance homes. In the Irish experience, where coal and peat are typically burned in the winter for added heat, the air is thick with dense soot. But the air inside the Passive Homes, filtered clean with HEPA filters, is better than the air outside.

“Ireland is so damp,” Foster says, “that everyone expects to have mold and mildew around their windows from October to April. Even in expensively built homes. But there was none of that in the Passive Homes, so kids didn’t lose days from school from respiratory issues. When the occupants put the clothes out to dry, there is no particulate from chimneys. They stay as clean as they did when they left the washing machine.”

The net result? There is a long waiting list for housing in Ireland, like here in Canada. But people have asked to be pushed to the bottom of the list, hoping that they will have a chance to live in one of these ‘cool new homes’. There is demand for the quality of life that a high-performance building offers. And the housing authority doesn’t have to worry about rebuilding every five years or worry about the income of the occupants making their home unaffordable. There is a demand for high quality housing.

Is that how we are making our decisions when it comes to building homes in Canada today? Obviously not. And that drives Deborah Byrne around the twist.

“Look at this RFP,” says Byrne, “You are penalized if you exceed the lowest bid. They fix the lowest bid at a 100%. If you are 10% higher, they lower your ranking to 90%. It’s a race to the bottom. The whole process is not science-based; it’s not outcomes-based.”

“What are we trying to do with new housing in Canada?” asks Byrne, “These are stupid, backwards and lazy procurement processes. And backwards funding models. The attitude is that the old way is sufficient. The thought is that building code is sufficient – it is not. The code is a minimum standard.”

Byrne points out that a rigorous design standard like Passive House drives cost effectiveness in design and construction. There is no place for add-ons or errors. Errors are where costs really lie in a project. Today Passive House multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) are 2-4% more expensive than “conventional” construction, which in fact, blows through contingencies of 10% or more all the time. In her experience, Passive House saves money.??

The social benefits of building high-performance housing are touted by advocates. Foster points out that high-performance buildings improve quality of life while ensuring that we stay under the 2-degree target for warming.

According to Foster, if we do the built environment right, we will improve energy efficiency and carbon efficiency but also, we can improve affordability and improve resilience to hot weather and cold weather. And get to things like gender equality, social justice, and health.

Social justice? Foster says, “Go cross the river to upstate New York and you will find third world conditions where people have been left behind. Where’s the justice in that? But by creating a liveable environment, you are suddenly recovering an entire segment of the population.”

Foster has gathered a high-level strategy group to develop quantifiable measures of what outcomes we should expect with a high-performance building. The German government has given the UN $24 million to work on the whole value chain for a building. A UN protocol will be coming out of this work. The task will then be to help countries implement this protocol across the globe.

Foster has also started four high-performance centres for excellence to engage with the local building community, to get them aligned. The Irish developer created his own training and curriculum to raise the capabilities of trades - for electricians, pipefitters, roofers, etc., on how to do things right. At some point, it will become generally accepted practice.

Building to a high-performance standard cannot wait

- Deborah Byrne

Byrne believes that building to a high-performance standard cannot wait.

“We need people to stop finding reasons why not and start looking for ways how to,” says Byrne, “This will create great innovation and economy. Anyone who has been trained to design or build Passive House never wants to do anything else. It makes so much sense and instills so much pride in all professionals, trades and owners.”

“Why is the UN dealing with community-led institutions?” asks Scott Foster, “We are finding that the people who make a difference are the ones with hammers and nails in their hands, who are doing the action on the ground, so we are focused on engaging the community to work on the climate level. Collectively, they make the difference.”

All the pieces are in place to design and build Passive House in Canada. The innovation will continue, but Passive House, a concept first developed in Saskatchewan and then refined by a German physicist, looks like our way to innovate out of building’s massive contribution to the climate crisis.

“It is not a brand,” says Jonathan Kearns, “It is a building standard, balancing energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and affordability. The Passive House Standard should not be a privilege; it should be a right.”?

This article was originally posted on kmai.com.