An Up Close Look at the 14th Annual North American Passive House Conference
NAPHC is the leading passive building conference for climate-specific zero energy design, construction, and building science expertise, held this year in Washington, DC, December 4-8
By Lisa Carey Moore, IES Sr. Sustainability Analyst
The PHIUS 2019 conference was another affirmation that the building industry is focused on solving problems contributing to climate change. Economist Jeremy Rifkin’s opening keynote was filled with data from recent studies—industry studies from the banking, insurance and energy sectors—that show that the business community is moving toward more carbon friendly energy sources like solar and wind, and that the Green New Deal has tremendous potential to improve quality of life and solve environmental issues.
Rifkin notes that in the US, 93% of infrastructure is owned by the states, so that there’s an opportunity to break the gridlock, and create new economy infrastructure that speaks to regional needs. He notes that funds could come from investors who are leaving the fossil fuel markets, and looking for new ways to invest their cash. He notes how buildings, old and retrofitted, will become microgrids, where energy is more easily managed, and less vulnerable to single attacks or failures. This is already happening at scale in Germany and China. What gives Rifkin hope that this transition will continue to the new Green economy, is the sense that millennials will not tolerate the status quo, and are willing to consider new paradigms.
Another overarching theme was courtesy of Zack Semke, a co-chair of Shift Zero (a nonprofit zero net carbon buildings alliance), who spoke to the power of narrative, and the importance of articulating a positive vision. Climate change is not a cliff we will fall off, but a slope we fall down, and we have the potential to change course and climb in the right direction.
Zack shared data to show that we are bending the carbon curve down (relative to emissions), which is important to speak to the naysayers that nothing can be done. A quote I liked from his talk was “Stop catastrophizing and do the work, because if we do the work we win!” I can’t recall if Zack was quoting Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, but it struck me, because sometimes it is hard to resist all the negative news.
In addition to the keynotes, I attended a host of workshops primarily focusing on large Passive House multifamily projects, both market rate and affordable. My goal was to learn as much as possible about the details of the envelope assemblies, but also the strategies employed to build and retrofit projects that really push beyond what most designers and builders are comfortable with.
IES’s Matt Root is currently working on a three million square foot project in Boston that is pursuing PH certification, one that will replace existing affordable housing with a mixture of market rate and affordable units, as well as space for other functions such as a community center. To create affordable housing that reduces occupant costs for energy to the minimum, while providing structures that allow occupants to shelter in place for up to a week (sometimes without back-up power) are also important factors when addressing economic disparities and the challenges of a more extreme climate.
For IESers and others immersed in the Living Building Challenge world, there are shared strategies and values of the PH community that make our knowledge of successful aspects of Living buildings work we must share. Christina Aßmann and I presented, to a packed crowd at the event, a talk titled a “Multi-Faceted Materials Analysis.” We focused on the challenges and opportunities of creating incredibly tight envelopes for PH, which help meet the Net Positive Goals of LBC’s energy petal, within the context of LBC’s Materials Petal.
Our workshop also included presentations on the critical need for embodied carbon analysis during design, as well as the challenge of refrigerants in our high tech system and appliances, sources that contribute an astonishing amount to the carbon emissions cycle simply through leakage in distribution lines. New generation refrigerants, which have much lower (or no!) ozone depletion potential, should be the goal for the latter, and conducting full Life cycle analysis on major material ingredients—via Revit’s Tally or the new Embodied Carbon Calculator tool, EC3—also must become standard practice. With this event behind me, I hope to be a better contributor to design discussions, and a better advocate for materials that should be a part of the new green economy.
