Mondays with Mike: The future’s so bright…

I work for PHIUS (rhymes with Prius), the acronym for Passive House Institute US. PHIUS is a nonprofit that works to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions from buildings. By applying some straightforward principles like airtightness, excellent windows and doors, active ventilation and heat recovery, and lots of insulation. Projects built to our energy standard use 40 – 60 percent less energy than conventional buildings. Project teams seeking to hit net zero targets are seeking PHIUS certification because they reduce the amount of renewable energy needed to hit the target. (We recently certified an apartment building that produces more energy than it consumes and the excess is used to charge electric cars.)  These buildings are supremely comfortable and quiet, and they have superb indoor air quality. They’re especially good at mitigating covid risks, and they’re good where smoke from wildfires is an issue.

PHIUS trains architects and builders, we evaluate and certify building projects (think LEED only better), we set certification standards, and we conduct research.

Passive house is a misnomer of sorts–the method and certification can be used in any building typology, including apartments.

For the past 14 years, PHIUS has convened the PHIUS Annual North American Passive House Conference in cities across the country, bringing together hundreds of engineers, architects, educators, policymakers, and energy consultants to talk about their projects, share lessons learned, discuss policy and code experience and to just celebrate.

We couldn’t do it this year for obvious reasons. We did hold a series of online panel discussions last week organized around profession. That is, Monday was builders, Tuesday was educators, Wednesday was architects and Thursday was developers. We had the usual technical glitches and Zoomie stuff, and while it didn’t substitute for the in-person event, it was a success.

A handful of universities have integrated our designer training into their architecture curriculum—and the educators panel brought faculty from those institutions together. A highlight of their panel—and of all the sessions IMHO—was a video featuring students who’ve taken that class and earned PHIUS CPHC certification. They can now design passive buildings! Judging from the ones I’ve met, and those in the video, our future is in good hands.

I’m biased, of course, but it’s the most inspiring and most optimistic thing I’ve seen for a long while. Give it a watch when you get a chance.