2023 Net Zero vs Passive House explained + BC Energy Step Code

This video is a conversational guide to understanding the differences and similarities to the common approaches to building high performance homes.

Both Prescriptive and Performance standards have their place, but they take different paths to achieving their results.

Passive House Certification Criteria:
Heating Demand Limit 15 kWh/ m2 per year
Heating Load Limit 10 W/m2
Cooling Load Limit 10 W/m2
Air Tightness Result 0.6 Air Changes / Hour (Pressurization)

0:00 Introductions
0:29 Passive House has become a symbol
1:02 Performance Standard vs Prescriptive Standard
1:25 BC Energy Step Code Explained
1:58 Air Changes per Hour
2:30 What it means to be Net Zero
3:17 Passive House is a Performance Based Standard
3:58 Energy Demand vs Energy Load
4:58 Passive House Air Changes per Hour Target
5:35 Why create an Air-barrier
6:40 Net Zero is a Prescriptive Standard
7:15 Passive House tends to prefer simple elegant designs
7:42 Typical House designs add complexity to energy performance
8:45 The challenges we saw with a prescriptive standard
12:07 Where prescriptive standards break down
13:24 Net Zero in action
14:40 You can build a solar farm to compensate for inefficient home
15:30 The technicality of Net Zero between house design
16:08 Passive house can be Net Zero
17:02 The bottom line for us as a company
18:00 We can do Net Zero homes now

[JackBoughson]

Loved your presentation, and I felt you did it well. Dumbing down (for the lack of a better term) higher-level concepts is an art form. Not everyone can do that. Keep it up!

[millennialvines]

Appreciate your info. We’re in the mix of this now w/ our engineers/architects in deciding between continuing to build our house to passive home standard or “just” a net zero-net positive /extreme HERS level. The catch is passive home certification is NOT a “real thing” it’s more so a private organization standard & they give their private organizations stamp of approval on it. “Passive Home” seems to have been hijacked & turned into a profit making business of certification sales & has been made intentionally overly complicated. Unfortunately we found out when you build to these passive standards you’re building it for YOU, not the financial value of it. Appraisals add $0 value & typical buyers do not care & won’t get you the payback on the high cost of the effort.

[TheEmbrio]

I get the same question every week, in France. Your teaching process step by step is very useful to streamline my own ’explanation’ to clients. Thanks

[lstangueralstanguera]

Thank you for the video. Passive house is beyond about efficient energy performance…it's really about achieving thermal comfort through throughtful building envelop details.

[ShortVersion]

Terminology is really complicated and important for these topics, good on you for doing such a thorough presentation!

We recently renovated a 70s home to what I'd call "Net-One Month, " where we took more of a generation-based approach. I had looked into redoing all the siding with added external insulation, or spray foaming the entire house, even looked into geothermal. In the end, we did pretty much everything that was viable, and maybe a little more.

It would have been really fun to try from scratch to include many more of the passive principles. People definitely should if building.

[marilynalspachtoth]

Thank you for the clarity. Your explanation brought it all together for me.

[timjameswarner]

Great content. Thanks for the presentation. Took me a while to follow along with the firefighter analogy until you got to “chubby house” and it clicked. It’s tricky because the step code appears performance based, but the 2018 reference house is indeed prescribed.

Thanks again, hope you’re staying safe in Kelowna. Best wishes from Nanaimo.

[masoudattar]

The right units are the following: space heating demand max. 15 kWh/m2a or heating load max. 10 W/m2

[sparkyind]

Thank you for such informative presentation!

[Bpt]

Totally relatable! Thank you very much. (Subscribed)

[felixchu]

Loving the video... but you need a mic that is not so strong. I am heading the marker and it brings chills down my spine. Lol

[stevenporter]

My wife and I are currently in the middle of this right now. We are building a new home and most of the online floorplans are not designed with any thoughts about performance home building. We found a local architect to modify the floorplan that we like and to help us with designing our new home. We don't want just a basic rectangle house but we are keeping the design in mind. Most of the architects/ builders in my area don't want to change or build more efficient. If they do, then they want to charge significantly higher just because it is not the norm---not because of just the costs. So there will have to be to make it easier for the majority of the homes being built to go to more performing homes.

It is very expensive to build a net zero home, let alone the added costs for passive standards. We currently live in a regular built home in 2017 with a 12.6kw solar system. Last year the solar system offset my power by 80 percent. Now that we are building a new home, we are going to build net zero as our goal.

Our goals are to build a more efficient, tighter, cleaner home for our family. Our architect actually went thru the numbers of SIP, ICF, 2x4 and 2x6 with ZipR6. SIP was almost twice the cost and ICF even more. The most cost effective per R value was the 2x6 with fiberglass insulation with approx=R25.--Southeastern US. I could swap the fiberglass insulation with rockwool batt and make it R29. A little more cost but worth it in my opinion. We will be using Heat Pump HVAC with ERV and dehumidifier. Sealed crawlspace and attic. We will have a hybrid water heater, high efficient windows/doors.

This to me is a much better than a code house and will future-proof our investment.

[yodaiam]

I am designing my house right now. I have looked into passive. One major concern is the amount of capital CO2 in higher step and passive houses. Some of the research I reviewed claims that 60 to 85% of the CO2 emissions comes from the materials used and construction. So even if you produce zero CO2 in the running of the house, it still has a big CO2 footprint. A passive house uses more material and takes more time to construct which increases an already high initial footprint. You can go with mainly wood products like Gutex and Accoya to act as a CO2 sink but similar products are not produced locally. The materials are expensive to start with and have high shipping costs which also reduces the CO2 sink. I think local producers have to start manufacturing products locally to cut shipping and material costs.

I am still not sure if passive house is the right way to go but I guess you have to start somewhere. I priced out Gutex, CLT, and Accoya. You are looking at a premium in the order of $400 000CDN for a 2500 sq ft house. So it is currently out of the picture without some major grant.

[paladain]

Seems like the European problem is their energy is hard to get and extremely expensive compared to what we get outside of Europe, especially in America. They get a lot more techy stuff too like heat pump dryers etc...
But for sure in the north American continent it makes a lot more sense to make a normal house more efficient and possibly use solar panels instead. Here personally I'll be building a nice house that would actually have decent resale value to input cost and do a small solar array with a wood stove back up and a rain water system. Seems like purpose built up front without the extra utilities could actually pay off.

[tealkerberus]

It's not really net zero until it's exporting as much energy back to the grid per annum as its annualised embodied energy. At that point, it's actually paying for itself - its total cost is net zero.

[sikandersandhu]

Very informative. Thankyou.
I was just wondering do we need to do any kind of cources or certification as a builder to build a Net zero house in British Columbia ?

[tealkerberus]

I don't think solar panels in a paddock next door should count. A microhydro system in a paddock next door would be a valid adjustment, but if you can't fit the solar panels on the house or at least in the quarter-acre block the house is on, that shouldn't count.

[oakld]

I was sure something had to be wrong with your units, since the consumption per anum can't be that low. You've messed up little bit passive house demand, it's 15 KWh/m2. For an average American house of 2000 sqft = 185 m2 it's about 2, 8 MWh per anum. It's still a extremely low value. I have very low energy house built 10 years ago (Della/Ytong aircrete, 160mm polystyrene insulation, triple pane windows, recuperating ventilation, ..) and I use about 3 - 4 times more energy for heating per anum.

[ConstantGardener-qq]

So helpful!!! I’m in the States and looking for Passive House experts in the Virginia, Maryland, DC area. Any suggestions?

[edstoffregen]

net zero, if you can buy your way into it rather than design your way to it like passive is fundamentally the major flaw of net zero. from a stronger sustainability point of view, net zero is a very weak attempt at resource conservation.