Solutions Fridays: Passive House

Image source: http://www.passivhaustagung.de
/Kran/First_Passive_House_Kranichstein_en.htm

Passive House design encompasses for me a lot of what sustainability is all about -- smart design, reducing demand for energy and resources, saving money, improving quality of life.

The basic premise is through smart design, and effective use of passive heating, cooling, and day-lighting techniques, buildings can be comfortable year-round in any climate without large, expensive. energy-intensive heating and cooling systems.  They can reduce heating energy demand by 90%.

Learn more about passive house design from the Passive House Institute US.

It's sometimes hard for people to imagine how we could meet global energy demand only with renewable energy -- a big part of what makes that possible is dramatically reducing the amount of energy we use (without reducing quality of life -- and indeed increasing it for a great many people).  Passive House design is an exciting way to make that happen.
 

Unity College Passive House (photo: Jonah Gula)

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Solutions Fridays

Taking a strategic approach to sustainability requires a strong and compelling vision of a sustainable future -- if you don't know where you're trying to go, you can't be strategic about getting there.

The system "global society in the biosphere" is too complex to predict what exactly a sustainable future will look like, so we need to rely on principles of sustainability to guide us.  Still, specific images and ideas for solutions can be compelling in keeping us going on this enormous journey towards sustainability. 

There are a tremendous amount of really exciting solutions already in practice today that can help us start to build a more complete picture of what a sustainable future might look like.

To that end, I'm starting a "Solutions Fridays" series, where I will post some basic info or a picture of a different solution on Fridays.

Please leave your suggestions for great solutions to include in this series in the comments. 

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