PHN Presents: Multifamily Buildings Energy Standards Report
Passive House vs. IECC and ASHRAE
Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, 2-3 PM ET
Passive House is increasingly written into policy and incentive programs, but comparing it directly to standard codes has been difficult — each uses different software, assumptions, and floor-area conventions. This study fixes that. The same 31-unit, four-story apartment building was modeled under 2021 IECC, ASHRAE 90.1-2016 and 2019 Appendix G, PHI Classic, PHI Low Energy Building, and Phius 2024 Core, across climate zones 1 through 7, with every result normalized to a common basis.
Passive House scenarios, from Honolulu to Duluth, showed a two- to four-and-a-half-fold improvement in heating and cooling demand and total energy from the baseline approaches. The study then translated Passive House inputs into EnergyPlus and found the performance holds up across software engines.
Marine Sanchez (RDH Building Science), the report’s author, presents the findings, the translation workflow behind them, and what they mean for accepting Passive House as an alternative compliance pathway. PHN’s Policy Director, Bronwyn Barry, will lead a discussion of the report with Marine and the audience.
Credit
1 AIA & PHI Credit
Learning Objectives
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Explain the difference between various energy standards, including IECC, ASHRAE, Phius, and PHI standards.
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Assess how Passive House standards compare relative to code-minimum and other performance-based pathways.
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Describe the Passive House-to-hourly translation workflow to more accurately compare whole-building TEUI results.
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Identify how the choice of software and protocol materially affects reported outcomes.
Featured Presenters:
Marine Sanchez leads RDH’s Passive House consulting services on the East Coast of the US and Canada, specializing in large-scale institutional and mixed-use projects. A Certified Passive House Designer (CPHD) since 2013 and a Passive House Certifier since 2019, she earned the PHPP Expert seal in 2022, underscoring her deep technical expertise in high-performance building design. She also collaborates with governmental bodies on sustainability policies, including the City of Toronto’s Zero Emissions Buildings Framework, and contributes to global Passive House standards as a member of the technical advisory committee for the International Passive House Conference.
Bronwyn Barry is a San Francisco-based architect and principal at Passive House BB. Her company exclusively designs residential projects that meet international Passive House standards. She is a co-founder of Passive House California (PHCA) and the Passive House Network (PHN), where she continues to volunteer as Policy Director.
