California Results | Report on Building Standards
New analysis finds Passive House designs for single-family homes will best protect Californians’ health, safety, and comfort from worsening impacts of climate change.
Well-sealed, highly energy efficient green building design is barely scratching the surface of its potential in California
As extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and climate disasters have battered California in recent years, a new analysis published Wednesday, Nov. 29, finds that constructing new single-family homes to all-electric Passive House standards is the best way to protect residents from the worsening impacts of climate changes, while also safeguarding power grids as the state transitions to clean energy.
The research offers first-of-its-kind analysis and data on 11 single-family homes built to Passive House standards in a variety of climate zones throughout California, evaluating their performance on comfort, indoor air quality, heating and cooling loads, and energy efficiency. The new research will be included in an appendix of a forthcoming report analyzing 50 single-family Passive House homes nationwide that will be published by the Passive House Network, a national education and advocacy organization. Emu Passive, an international building science research and consulting firm, conducted the research.
The research compares homes built to the two primary Passive House standards in the U.S. — Passive House Institute (PHI) and Phius — with standard code-built California homes, which meet the baseline Title 24 energy code. It finds that for heating and cooling, adopting PHI’s Passive House standard allows a reduction of over 50% energy use compared to Title 24 homes.
Because its building envelope is so well-sealed, PHI’s Passive House standard design flattens heating loads. This has crucial ramifications for California, even with its mild year-round climate in many regions. While cooling demand typically peaks in daytime, when renewable generating resources like wind and solar are strongest, heating demand occurs at night, when renewable generation is scarcer. That requires storage systems like electric batteries. The research found PHI’s Passive House standard can drastically reduce the need to integrate battery storage into California’s electric grid.
