The start of the PH2020: Choose Your Future conference is upon us! Get ready for in-depth discussions with the presenters and finding new network connections from across the country and around the world.
NAPHN is known for its great conferences – packed with relevant information, and energetic exchange of ideas and contacts – and this year, while the format is different, the same energetic engagement and presentation of actionable information are expected – just now, it’s over six weeks, each week with a three-hour burst of activity.
Week one – like the following five weeks – has five sessions, each tackling very different topics and expert perspectives. Here’s the rundown:
- What Now? An Opening Plenary Keynote & Discussion
- Passive Assets: Using the Data to Underwrite Passive House Financing
- A Toxic Investment? Your Building’s Health Begins with Healthy Materials
- It’s About the Outside Air: Why Passive House Ventilation is the Invisible Hand of High Performance
- Owners Roundtable #1 – Deciding to To It: How Owners Choose Passive House
What Now? Features a keynote by Dan Heath, a bestselling author that focuses on system change and the underlying factors in making transformational efforts successful – with a set of stories clearly applicable to our struggles in the building industry. It’s not a perspective typically found at a Passive House conference, but in Dan’s discussion with Wolfgang Fiest and Bronwyn Barry make the connections and should leave you with new ideas about pathways forward.
Passive Assets is the beginning of a project that has been sought by industry professionals since the first days of Passive House building in America: performance data collected, interpreted and explained; and consequently building a clear rationale for lenders to underwrite additional funding to a portion of the prospective operational energy cost savings, and providing, in particular, much more robust funding for affordable housing, addressing the intersection of multiple larger socio-economic objectives. (That evening an informational supplement of this session will be provided at the Global Passive House Happy Hour.)
A Toxic Investment? Confronts the fact that when we look at our polluted environment, we must start by looking at the materials and products we are putting into our buildings. And because Passive House doesn’t have criteria directly related to toxicity, the point must be emphasized if we are to make truly sustainable buildings, that protect even those most vulnerable to pollutants. This cross-disciplinary panel takes you from the high-level to chemical specifics, to practical application from a leading sustainable affordable housing developer.
It’s About the Outside Air goes into great technical detail on a full array of Passive House ventilation issues – from why PHI’s component testing procedures and system performance criteria are as they are, and why no one should settle for less. It also goes into system approaches and the hygienic imperative that was at the heart of the Passive House standard from the beginning and its relevance in the Covid-19 pandemic today. It dives into duct layout, testing, and more, in about as exhaustive a session can be in just under an hour.
Owners Roundtable #1 is a truly fascinating session. It’s nice when building professionals can convince developers to do Passive House but isn’t it so much more powerful when a developer tells their team they want Passive House? To understand how we get there, we need to get inside their heads: What are their aspirations? Their fears? Their strategies for success? In this first of a three-part series, five developers, from diverse regions, backgrounds, and project types, discuss what went through their company leaderships’ heads, that got them to the point of saying, “Let’s do this thing.” Join the discussion with them online and dig.
Five great sessions over three hours. Pretty exciting, right? And this is just the beginning.
This new format makes it easy for you to attend and participate. Be part of the collective of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Let’s grow together.
Join us for the kick-off, Wednesday, June 24 at 1 pm EST. Don’t miss it!
