Passive House Home Building Standard Gaining Support

We’ve written about energy-efficient home building in the past. Most recently with our review of last year’s Homearama and also with a post entitled Green Louisville Home: Simple Ways to Green Up Your Louisville Home.

photo of Technische Universitat in Darmstadt
Technische Universitat in Darmstadt, Germany won the Solar Decathlon competition with a Passive House-certified building design. (Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET )

I just finished reading this cnet piece about Passive House and how their efforts have raised the bar in energy efficiency and building eco-friendly structures. The process hasn’t caught on in the United States as it has in Europe with its 20,000 certified Passive House buildings but it’s gaining support.

Here’s an excerpt:

By lowering the energy demand, architects can equip homes with much smaller heating and cooling equipment. Homeowners, meanwhile, benefit from lower bills. The system doesn’t impose an architectural style and works for different building types, including standalone homes, row houses, or larger buildings such as schools, adherents say.

It makes sense to me that certain Louisville home builders could champion this cause and position themselves as the “green home builders” in our city. This would separate them from builders who merely build homes the old-fashioned way.