Why The Passive House Network?
You’re committed to creating a sustainable built environment, but do the buildings you deliver meet your ambitious climate, health and social goals? Do they slash carbon emissions?
Passive House is the only building methodology that radically cuts carbon emissions from building operations, and we provide high-quality Passive House education to stakeholders across the building industry, that gets you across the goal line.
Our courses connect your design and construction decisions to dramatically effective, proven results. Working in partnership with the Passive House Institute and the International Passive House Association, we provide a global knowledge community to scale these efforts.
We see a world where you are empowered to make the choices that drive building performance, and successfully transform the built environment to meet the awesome challenge of our climate emergency.
The Challenge
Most buildings – even “green” buildings – are counterproductive: They use too much energy, provide poor and unreliable indoor air quality, are not safe in black-outs, and expensive to operate and maintain. They remain dependent on fossil fuels. The sad fact is the building industry is generally illiterate when it comes to understanding what makes buildings good or bad. Stakeholders don’t discern the direct connection between design and construction choices and climate, health, and social outcomes. Their judgment is impaired by bad habits.
To complicate things, typically, the corrective steps proposed suffer from low expectations. All involved hedge on deep reform with imagined technology fixes around the corner. They fail to recognize their own power and fall well short of the systemic change required of our built environment.
Our Approach
The Passive House Network (PHN), formerly known as NAPHN, is a high-performance building literacy program. We provide comprehensive, high-quality Passive House education to stakeholders across the building industry – from architects and engineers, to builders and developers, to regulators and policymakers. We demystify the impact of design and construction choices, form knowledge-sharing networks, raise expectations, and transform how professionals fundamentally think and work.
Passive House is widely recognized as the most powerful tool we have today to produce buildings that rise to meet our challenges, forming the cornerstone of climate mitigation and adaptation, public health, and equity impacts.
Read The PHN Difference, for a description of what makes us uniquely positioned in the US building industry.
Our Vision
A sustainable, post-carbon, all-renewable energy future – supported by buildings that are efficient, comfortable, affordable, resilient, and healthy.
Our Mission
The transformation of the built environment, using the tools developed by the Passive House Institute, is a critical effort to combat global warming. We provide training, conferences, and other events to both engage and educate design and building professionals, policymakers, and the general public. We support the success and vitality of the Passive House community.
The Bridge, Waring School, Opal Architecture
Our Values
Our values are calls to action, making our work itself, inseparable from the world we are working to make.
- Be Curious – striving for continuous learning
- Be Inspired – maintaining a sense of wonder
- Be Visionary – imagining the future
- Be Bold – calling for urgency and action
- Be Celebratory – infusing effort with joyful promotion
- Be Collaborative – making a welcoming & equitable community
- Be Professional – working with integrity and transparency
If you share these values or will challenge yourself to live up to them to the best of your ability – join us!
PHN Conference Design Awards Celebration, Denver, 2023
Our Impact
PHN’s impact is focused on culture change through educational programming for professions, owners, policymakers, and the general public.
PHN Educational Activities Include:
- Over 1,000 trained professionals through the Certified Passive House Designer program.
- Thousands of participants in events that include PHN Presents, International Passive House Days, PHN DEI, Ask the Certifiers, our national conferences, and more.
- Dozens of resources from reports to the embodied carbon calculator PHribbon, to videos, and more.
- Hundreds of Members and 7 Regional Chapters, support peer-to-peer learning – connecting community.
- Collaborative efforts with Passive House proponents and allies across North America and worldwide.
With Significant Results:
- Over 3 MM SF of PHI Certified Passive House buildings in the US with many more million uncertified- including thousands of affordable apartments, schools and offices.
- The NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence Program
- Code Compliance Passive House Pathways adoption.
- Massachusetts Specialized Opt-In Building Codes.
- Adoption of Passive House methodologies across a broad spectrum of sustainable building practices and programs.
- A building culture that ridiculed Passive House and today incorporates it.
PHN Structure
A Nonprofit: PHN is a nonprofit 501c(3) corporation with an independent Board of Directors. PHN has core staff and independent trainers. The organization’s bylaws are here – and the conflict of interest policy is here. There are board committees that help organize and govern NAPHN, and current committees and members are listed here. PHN has a formal commitment to gender and racial equity in its governance, operations and actions, across all aspects of PHN. See the current policies on board composition, here. See our statement on Equity & Inclusion, here.
Transparency
We are proud to have achieved the Silver level GuideStar Seal of Transparency. See our GuideStar profile.
On Equity & Inclusion
Our climate crisis is inextricably linked with our social crisis: structural racism and marginalization. We can’t solve the climate without addressing the social because the same broken system drives these and other crises. Social justice and environmental justice are core to making a sustainable future, and The Passive House Network is committed to making these connections explicitly. If you think making a better world depends on us centering social justice and want to work at it, work with us. A short list of PHN resources and activities to consider and to participate in.
PHN Conference Session Hosted by Alexander Person, Denver, 2023
Chapters
PHN Chapters are wholly part of PHN. Chapters are led by Chapter Leaders based on a standard Leader Agreement. Chapters are governed by a Chapter Governance Document.
iPHA
PHN is also a member of the International Passive House Association, part of the Passive House Institute, based in Darmstadt, Germany. See the affiliation agreement here.
