By, Adrian Willanger
Building Toward a Carbon Neutral Future
We are starting to see a handful of builders that are taking the idea of slashing the heating and energy consumption of their homes very seriously. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that buildings are responsible for 48% of greenhouse gas emissions annually and an amazing 76% of all the electricity generated goes into supplying the Building Sector. Many of these builders are using the Passive House standards to benchmark their high-performance homes. The Passive House is the world’s leader in energy efficient building. The concept is fairly easy to understand but extremely hard for most American Builders to implement requiring a major shift in their approach to design and construction.
A Passive House is an extremely well-insulated, virtually air-tight building envelop that is primarily heated by passive solar gain and by internal gains from people, electrical equipment instead of relying on “active” systems to provide necessary heat.
The cost can be as high as 14% to reach the Passive House standards for the additional insulation, upgraded windows and a heat recovery ventilator. Even if energy cost never went up the Passive House, or a house built close to these standards, would have considerably lower operating costs compared to code built homes. Other benefits, aside from almost being energy independent, are no drafts, fresh air is delivered continuously and indoor air pollution is reduced.
The Passive House standards for central Europe have helped raise the awareness’, of countries around the world, of steps that can be taken to help reduce GHG emissions from the building sector.
The U.S. Department of Energy has posed a challenge to the home building industry – to build 220,000 high performance homes by 2012. Homes that qualify for the Builders Challenge must achieve a 70 or better on the EnergySmart Home Scale (E-Scale), meaning that they will use at least 30% less energy than a typical new home built to code.
“For Martha Rose Construction building high-performance homes has been a core business model for the last 10 years,” said Martha Rose. “We welcome this voluntary initiative for builders, and look forward to working with DOE to build consumer awareness of the benefits for buying highly energy efficient homes.”