The latest news on low CO2 communitities
Mary James spoke recently with Sarah Evans, owner of a Passive House that was completed last May in Salem, Oregon. The home is profiled in Recreating the American Home: The Passive House Approach. How has the experience of living in your new Passive House been? Any surprises? We had to learn how to use our [...]
Rick Milburn of Solar Knights Construction, one of the builders showcased in Recreating the American Home: The Passive House Approach, was featured in Natural Home Magazine this month. Says Milburn about Passive Houses: “People think these things are complicated,” Milburn says, “but they’re supersimple.” Read Aggressively Passive: Building Homes to the Passive House Standard.
Günter Pazen, Passive House window pioneer and owner of Enersign windows, spoke with Mary James about his commitment to building better windows and the development of his business. What prompted you to start manufacturing energy-efficient windows? I started in the window business about 40 years ago, but I started seriously thinking about making more efficient [...]
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward. To read [...]
Dr. Wolfgang Feist, director of the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany, will be making a rare SF Bay Area appearance. The public is welcome to attend a presentation he will be giving on November 2 about the development and implementation of the Passive House standard. Dr. Wolfgang Feist, “The Principles of Passive House” Lecture 6-10 [...]
UPDATE: The California Energy Upgrade program has been shut down due to a California judge who issued a temporary restraining order against the California Energy Commission, which has caused the agency to miss federal application deadlines. At West Coast Green 2010 Michael Wheeler from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) discussed Energy Upgrade California, a [...]
The Passive House Institute’s (PHI) conference in Dresden, Germany started this morning with Dr. Wolfgang Feist announcing a new institute certification for retrofits of existing buildings, the EnerPHit certificate. The new certificate serves as proof that a building has been remodeled using PHI approved components or has achieved a heating energy demand of no more [...]
(top) The Waldsee BioHaus, in Bemidji, Minnesota, the first officially certified Passive House in the United States, was featured in Low Carbon Productions’ first book about passive houses, Homes for a Changing Climate: Passive Houses in the U.S. (bottom) German University’s Technische Universitat Darmstadt’s passive house was the winner of the 2007 Solar Decathlon. Image [...]
