Sixty people signing up for the discussion mailing list in 45 days certainly validates my hunch.

Until recently, the number one position Google search for “passive house canada” was a blog post of mine from a year ago titled “Canada lacking in Passive House movement“. Even that generated several email inquires, including some from the press. I’m happy to report that article has fallen to the fourth spot on the Google search results page.

My goal here is organization-building in whatever form it takes to bring Passive House to Canada, to do it well, and with expedience. I don’t see myself as profiting from this, as my particular business interest lies in energy reductions of existing larger buildings, facilities and plants. I just want to see Passive House happen here.

The work on organization-building continues. Please join us on the mailing list if you’re interested in seeing PassivHaus come to Canada.

There was a bit of a stir lately within the building science online communities when a well-known and respected building scientist published a review of the Passive House standard.

John Straube published a review of the Passive House standard on BuildingScience.com compared to standards and practices applicable in the U.S. and Canada, available at http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-025-the-passivhaus-passive-house-standard. In it Straube takes a close look at Passive House from a North American context, comparing it to other low-energy building systems for cold climates.

Katrin Klingenberg of Passive House Institute U.S. posted a lengthy response to John Straube’s article at http://www.passivehouse.us/bulletinBoard/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=208, correcting a few misunderstandings.

On GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, there is an initial discussion and reaction to Straube’s article at http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/community/forum/passive-house/14647/very-recent-passivhaus-article. Later, Marc Rosenbaum and David White wrote a point-by-point clarification of why the Passive House Standard sets a worthy goal for North America at http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-blog/defense-passive-house-standard

Also on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, Martin Holladay and John Straube discuss the lowest cost approach, which differs from Passive House. The lowest cost approach improves the building envelope until the incremental cost of further improvements would be more expensive than photovoltaic technology. Passive House on the other hand looks at absolute energy consumption of the building envelope, so in a sense it is more “future-proof” than a house with more technology, and is likely the best choice for a future with constrained energy supply. Plus, it is much less expensive to add PV later than to retrofit additional underslab insulation. See http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/can-foam-insulation-be-too-thick

And finally, John Straube clarified his position in the whole discussion at http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-026-passivhaus-becomes-active-further-commentary-on-passivhaus.

If you are interested in helping bring Passive House to Canada, visit http://www.passivebuilding.ca and join the email discussion list.

Organizations such as Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition in Canada should take advantage of Passive House and run with it. The standards, methodology and technology have already been worked out, and Germany is several years ahead of us at that.

Of course the EQulibrium(TM) Housing initiative from CMHC is useful. It is out of demonstration programs like EQulibrium and its predecessors that we get innovation. But it’s a long process. Results are slow to trickle down. The only hard technical information on existing EQulibrium houses comes from the few projects that have established web sites and are willing to share the information.

It’s time to stop building a dozen demonstration houses every decade and adopt a proven system to actually build and certify these homes. There’s already over 12,000 in Europe.

UPDATE Nov 6 2009: I have started www.passivebuilding.ca as a meeting place for everyone interested in bringing Passive House to Canada.