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Passive House: Super energy efficient housing

How a new kind of home which produces more energy than it consumes, can drastically reduce fuel bills and CO2 emissions.

This century-old home in Berkeley, California, has been retrofitted to approach passive house standards.

Photo: Nabih Tahan

With houses like Klingenberg’s and Tahan’s becoming more numerous and better known, "the critical mass has finally been reached and enough people in America are aware of the technology and its advantages," Barry says. What’s needed now, she argues, are "financial incentives such as tax cuts or government subsidies" similar to the ones available in the European Union. "That would go a long way toward getting the show on the road."

New construction "can come as a detached or semi-detached home, as a terraced house or interconnected row of houses," Disch says. "It can be used for groups of houses or an entire housing estate like the one in Freiburg." The buildings can also be built using local materials and in local architectural styles.

The biggest drawback is lack of sunlight. Homes in cloudy climes have more insulation and more efficient windows and heat-exchange systems to compensate. Larger buildings require larger solar arrays, so experts are creating a photovoltaic foil that can be applied to facades or windows, turning structures into solar power plants.

Sattler, for one, is happy with his energy-thrifty home. "An ordinary house or one like this?" he asks. "There is simply no contest."

Ursula Sautter, who will be using her wood stove more often, wrote about hypnosis in the December 2008 issue.

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