The Passive House Network Announces Program for National Building Conference Focused on Integrated Climate Action
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The national conference program will include a wide range of topic-specific sessions and panel discussions focused on the intersections of four primary drivers of sustainability in the context of climate action: energy efficiency, electrification, embodied carbon emissions & social equity.
Boston, MA, May 9, 2022 – The Passive House Network announced the full program today for the Passive House 2022 Conference: Passive House For All. The conference will take place on June 10 online and on June 17 in-person in Boston, and online.
The event will take on the full range of specialized technical, process, and policy aspects of Passive House and drives climate action. But it will also challenge industry and stakeholders to think more holistically, looking at the intersections of efficiency, electrification, embodied carbon and social equity.
“Our climate crisis compels all of us, including the building sector, to demand a change in the business-as-usual culture. We want to inspire conference participants to be more ambitious and reach for sustainability goals that will match the urgent needs of our time: climate mitigation & adaptation, health, climate justice, net-zero outcomes and more,” said Ken Levenson, Executive Director of The Passive House Network.
“Passive House is the most powerful tool to help make these needed changes, setting up a wide range of sustainability goals up for success.”
The program will feature cutting edge projects by industry leaders in Massachusetts from modest single-family homes to the Winthrop Center, a new office skyscraper being completed in downtown Boston. Trends like the biotech laboratory building boom, new financing opportunities, and the ability to electrify everything, including commercial kitchens will be examined. Critical topics that cut across these themes, like net-zero energy and scaling retrofits will also be considered.
Split into two one-day sessions, the first day is all-online and consists of 20 topic-specific deep-dives exploring many aspects of efficiency, electrification, embodied carbon and social equity. The second day will be a series of expert panel discussions, organized by the conference themes, to provide a wide ranging discussion from varied perspectives, with the intention of heightening the awareness of the interdependence of these sustainability strategies.
June 10 program highlights include:
- An Education in Harnessing Efficiency: A 580-bed student residence at the University of Southern Maine delivers institutional sustainability goals with Passive House efficiency.
- The New Frontier, Downtown: The Passive Spec Office Building: A downtown Boston highrise case study in reshaping workplace expectations.
- Retrofit First: Occupied Apartment Tower Step-by-Step EnerPHit: Lessons learned from multi-phase 20-story retrofit with occupants in place.
- The Chef’s Kitchen: All-Electric: In our quest to electrify everything, all-electric kitchens – both residential & commercial – are counterintuitively compelling. Hear it from the chef.
The June 17 program expert panel discussions include:
- The Power of Efficiency: How is energy efficiency driving performance today?
- Making All-Electric Choices: What electrification pathways can we plug into the grid and optimally leverage efficiency?
- Tackling Embodied Carbon: How will our efficient all-electric buildings drive down embodied carbon?
- The Equity Imperative: Making social equity a full partner in our definition of sustainability.
- Supporting Equitable Sustainability: How do we fund, incentivize and support choices that drive sustainable communities?
The full program session listings with descriptions and speakers can be found on the event website.
Primary event partners include The Passive House Institute (PHI), the global leader of Passive House research, as well as the regional group, Passive House Massachusetts (PHMA).
In addition to core topic-specific sessions on June 10 and a series of interdisciplinary panel discussions on June 17, there will be deep-dive workshops on June 16, local Boston building tours on June 18 and several happy hour socials to meet and connect with fellow change-makers.
Find out more and register at https://phnconference.org/
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About PHN:
The Passive House Network (PHN), formerly known as NAPHN, is a 501(c)3 that provides Passive House high-performance building education and resources to professionals across the U.S. that transform how they think and work with buildings. PHN provides professionals a complete skill set to reliably produce new and renovated buildings that use dramatically less energy for effective and affordable climate action. https://passivehousenetwork.org/
About PHI:
The Passive House Institute (PHI) is an independent research institute that has played an especially crucial role in the development of the Passive House concept – the only internationally recognized, performance-based energy standard in construction. https://passivehouse.com/
About PHMA:
Passive House Massachusetts is a member-based, non-profit organization that focuses on education, training, outreach, and advocacy to accomplish its goals. PHMA regularly hosts meetings, trainings, tours, and other events related to Passive House design and construction and serves as a hub of knowledge for high-performance design in the state and region. https://phmass.org/
About Passive House:
Passive House is an international building standard and methodology, applicable to buildings of all kinds from office buildings to hospitals, new-build and renovations, that results in a dramatic drop in operational energy use, and more comfortable and healthy occupants – meant to aggressively mitigate our climate crisis while providing resilient adaptation.
The Passive House Standard was developed by the Passive House Institute (PHI), an independent scientific research organization, located in Darmstadt, Germany, and includes specific requirements for energy use and comfort of occupants. The Passive House Standard is being successfully applied to thousands of buildings and millions of square feet around the world, from Boston to Beijing.
The Passive House methodology starts with reducing cooling, dehumidification, and heating loads by focusing, not on gadgets and active technology, but instead on fully integrated durable passive building components, such as proper continuous thermal-bridge-free insulation, continuous airtightness, high-performance windows and doors, and ventilation that includes a high-efficiency heat/energy recovery core, carefully calculated, and all integrated with the entire architectural process of design and construction. http://www.passivehouse.com http://www.passipedia.org
The International Passive House Association is a membership, communications, and global community-building arm of the Passive House Institute with over 30 affiliated regional Passive House organizations around the world. https://passivehouse-international.org/ /’;.
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