Silicon Valley Passive Building Coalition Website

Welcome to the website of the Silicon Valley Passive Building Coalition.

The mission of the SVPBC is to promote the highly efficient “Passive House(tm)” design approach. Passive Houses use 80-90% less heating and cooling energy than comparable conventionally-built homes, for a small additional upfront cost and overall lifetime savings. (Passive Houses also provide significantly improved indoor air quality over conventional homes.) The Passive House is well-proven in Europe – there are over 9,000 Passive Houses built in Europe, in all different building styles – and is gaining popularity in the U.S. (see references below). It is extremely well-suited to the climate on the Peninsula.

SVPBC is helping local municipalities to set challenging but practical goals for maximizing energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction in the local communities of the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California.

In particular, many communities are creating “climate action plans” which include incentives for the use of design options that promote energy efficiency and carbon savings. SVPBC promotes including an incentive related to the use of extremely energy-efficient design and building approaches such as super insulation, zero-net energy, and the “Passive House” concept.

In addition, SVPBC believes that municipalities should create programs that assist with the promotion and permitting process of super-insulated, passively-heated residential structures to help meet the Architecture 2030 goals. Some of the program features might consist of the following:

• Distribution of typical design guidelines and strategies
• Assistance with code compliance procedures
• Consideration of building permit fee waivers and/or acceleration of the permitting process for designs conforming to a “passive house” or other extremely energy efficient standard

The following websites provide much additional information on the opportunities for energy efficiency, several organizations promoting a transition to highly energy efficient buildings, and the passive house concept and movement.

• Architecture 2030 (http://www.architecture2030.org) - The Architecture 2030 challenge includes the following goal for 2010: “All new buildings, developments and major renovations shall be designed to meet a fossil fuel, GHG-emitting, energy consumption performance standard of 50% of the regional (or country) average for that building type.”
• California Public Utility Commission Long Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan (http://www.californiaenergyefficiency.com/docs/EEStrategicPlan.pdf) - The CPUC plan includes four “Big Bold strategies” strategies for significant energy-savings, two of which are: 1) all new residential construction in California will be zero net energy by 2020, and 2) all new commercial construction in California will be zero net energy by 2030.
• Passive House Institute (Germany) (http://passiv.de) - The Passive House Institute, Darmstadt, Germany, a research institute dedicated to residential energy efficiency and systems, has shown that actual built structures can achieve 80-90% heating and cooling energy reduction based on their design guidelines. Over 9,000 “passive house” structures, including single family, multi-family, and apartment buildings, have been built in Europe that perform at or near energy goal. Also, Passive House Institute (U.S.) (http://passivehouse.us) - The U.S. affiliate of the German Passive House Institute, and Passive House California (http://passivehouseca.org), another California-based passive house group based in Berkeley.
• Many green building standards have set zero (or near zero) net energy use for residential buildings as a progressive goal for structures and building codes in the near future, including the Leadership in Environmental and Energy-Efficient Design (LEED) standard’s residential rating system, Architecture 2030, and Build It Green’s GreenPoint Rated Checklist residential rating system / Green Building Guidelines for New Home Construction. Several California municipalities have adopted local building codes inspired by Architecture 2030 that exceed the 2005 California Building Energy Efficiency Standards:
  • Santa Barbara California Locally Adopted Building Energy Efficiency Standard (http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/2005standards/ordinances/2007-10-17_SANTA_BARBARA.PDF)
  • Palo Alto Locally Adopted Building Energy Efficiency Standard (http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/2005standards/ordinances/2008-11-05_PALO_ALTO.PDF)
  • Other Local Ordinances Exceeding the 2005 California Building Energy Efficiency Standards (http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/2005standards/ordinances_exceeding_2005_building_standards.html)

  Note: Passive House is a trademark of the Passive House Institute U.S. (http://passivehouse.us).