Rethinking the Passive House Message

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The passive house idea started in Germany in the 1990s as a way to make buildings more energy efficient. People and businesses spend a lot of money to heat their homes, factories, stores and offices, usually by burning fossil fuels. Not only is this expensive, it also produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide emissions, which is the main cause of global warming. In the US, the Passive House Network was founded in 2011 to passive house concepts in america.

On its website, PHN says most buildings, even “green” ones, are uncomfortable, use too much energy, have poor indoor air quality and are expensive to operate. It says the construction industry is generally confused about what drives performance, but its programs demystify the impact of design and construction choices, raise expectations and transform how you think and work. It offers introductory, core certification and advanced courses to help people and construction professionals take the next steps in making new buildings more efficient and climate-friendly.

Passive House progress is slower than expected

Despite the obvious benefits of more energy-efficient buildings, Passive house idea hasn’t caught on as quickly as hoped for a number of reasons — many of which will sound familiar to those of you who are EV advocates. Building to passive house standards typically adds 5 to 8 percent to the cost of a new build. While that added cost is recouped many times over (a passive house can significantly reduce your annual heating bill), many buyers are hesitant to incur the additional upfront cost.

Furthermore, people have been building the same way for a long time. There is a huge inertia to changing the way things are done in the construction industry. Architects, insurers, lenders, and building code officials are intimately familiar with how things have been done in the past and are not very receptive to those who claim there is a better way. And then there is the social issue. The whole passive house idea seems like one of those communist pinko plots dreamed up by tree huggers wearing lederhosen and Birkenstocks and driving Volvos in Vermont. Many people subscribe to the philosophy that “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle

I'm going to take a little detour here, but fear not, dear reader. We'll get back to the main theme in a moment. The Internet is a strange and mysterious place. It has the power to bring people together to share ideas in a way that wasn't possible before. I've established myself on Sub-stackwhere I repost some of the articles I write for family and friends who don't visit regularly CleanTechnica readers. But something strange has happened. Now that I am on the internet myself, some people have found me online and decided to follow my ramblings.

One of them is Lloyd Alter. He also has a Sub-stack space and it's pretty good so I signed up to follow it. Now the train is back on track. Lloyd recently posted an article about the Passive House Network and the new marketing approach designed to attract more followers by emphasizing comfort. The campaign builds on the wisdom of Zig Zeigler, a marketing genius who preached that “people don't buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” As a result, people buy on emotion and then justify their decision with facts later.

You may have noticed that the world is getting warmer. Where the focus was once on lowering heating bills, the Passive House Network now wants to emphasize that buildings built to their standards are more comfortable and can also significantly reduce cooling costs. They can keep people cool even when there’s no electricity to run the air conditioning. Many people in Houston could have benefited from that when the power went out for more than a week. At that point, paying a little more up front is largely irrelevant.

Comfort and efficiency

Kim Ravold of PHN recently told Lloyd Alter, “At first glance, the Passive House Standard appears to be driven by efficiency, as the end result is dramatically reducing energy consumption. What’s less clear is that these energy-efficient benchmarks are tied to occupancy comfort. Each drives the other, not just in terms of surface temperature, but also cleaner air, less noise, and fewer pests. Comfort is physical, emotional, visceral. Comfort feels like a luxury.

“At the same time, we are asking the question ‘Are you comfortable’ existentially. Are you comfortable with the fact that the buildings we typically design, build and occupy produce 40% of the world’s carbon emissions? Are you comfortable with a building that contributes to our climate crisis, or do you want to be part of the solution? This is not about sacrificing comfort for efficiency. Passive House is the building standard that we can literally and figuratively rest easy with.”

In June 2014wrote architect Elrond Burrell: “Energy efficiency is really only one part of the passive house. People often don’t realise that the Passivhaus standard is also a strict comfort standard that ensures that a building is free from draughts, free from cold spots, free from excessive overheating and is provided with a constant supply of fresh, clean air. And all this with a minimum amount of energy.”

Alter explains that our bodies don’t care what temperature the thermostat is set at. What matters is the rate at which they gain or lose heat to surrounding surfaces. Your skin and your brain care about the average radiant temperature, the theoretical uniform surface temperature of an envelope. Passive House structures are so comfortable because the temperatures of the walls and windows are close to our skin temperature. If the walls are warm, you are warm. In warm weather, the reverse is true: if the walls are cool, you are cool.

There is another benefit to a structure built to Passive House standards. It helps protect the people inside from the fine particles in wildfire smoke. You may not live in an area where wildfires are common, but for those who do, this can be a very important consideration.

The takeaway meal

I found Lloyd Alter’s Substack article informative and well written. If you want to dive deeper into the Passive House Network’s new marketing strategy, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you went over there and read his full article. I told him I was going to steal from it and he didn’t object. This is how the internet can work to share information with people and give us all the tools we need to make good decisions, if only trolls, bullies, and clowns didn’t screw up the process so much that we avoided going online.

Comfort is an emotional concept, efficiency is not. Kudos to the Passive House Network for focusing on how their ideas can promote a more comfortable indoor environment. That’s a concept that will appeal to a wide range of people. If more structures are built that keep us comfortable year-round while reducing energy costs, that’s a big win for them and the environment.