The Ten Percent Revolution: What Answer is Europe Providing to Skyrocketing Heating Costs?

If there is one thing that European homeowners agree on today, it is the fact that burning fossil fuels to heat our homes is once and for all a thing of the past. It has entered the consumer’s conscience that every new home built today will see in its lifetime the end of gas and oil as an affordable heating source. This major shift in the public’s perception is now occurring in the US as well.

Predominantly in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, over 4000 buildings have been built in recent years to a new standard that reduces the heating energy consumption by a revolutionary 90% over conventionally built buildings! PASSIVE HOUSE is the name of this standard and it limits the heating required for a home to about 4,755 BTU per square foot per year. Additionally, total primary energy consumption of a home (including domestic hot water, electricity and heating) is limited to about 38,000 BTU per square foot per year. 

Let’s stop for a minute and put this into perspective: The average national heating bill for winter 2004/2005 was about $1300 (for the entire heating season); in a Passive House you would have paid only $130! Would that have been a wise investment or what?

Every year before winter we hear on the news that we should brace ourselves for another price hike in heating cost. We rarely learn about the bigger picture which is called PEAK OIL, - the point when global oil and gas production begins to taper off and demand rises sending the price through the roof. From Winter 2004 to Winter 2005 prices rose between 17% and 45%, with the bulk being between 25% and 30%. If you put the pencil to the paper and extend this over 10 years, it becomes clear that we will be looking at a heating bill on the order of $1000 per month!  All of a sudden investing in energy conservation and energy efficiency makes perfect economic sense.

The Europeans achieve these stunning results by applying a whole list of measures that reduce heat loss at any cost. Houses are airtight and wind tight, they are tested for air leakage with a blower door to verify or exclude any uncontrolled air exchange. Mechanical ventilation equipped with heat recovery provides superior indoor air quality. Their envelopes are super insulated with insulation levels far beyond what we are used to. Windows are triple pane and their frames are insulated. And here it is: due to the extremely small amount of heat needed they are able to skip the heating system altogether. No more chimneys, no more propane coming into the house, no more vented mechanical rooms, no more boilers and no more water heaters. They had to invent new mechanical equipment capable of handling such small loads. You could literally heat a Passive House with the same amount of heat supplied by a hair dryer!

With Europe being so far ahead of us, what can we do to catch up? Well, we can adopt, learn from and modify some of their strategies. Primarily we should take advantage of what central Europe envies us for: the sun - a very powerful token to bargain with. This is our opportunity to rejuvenate passive solar design; it is the best looking and most economical of all solar technologies. A high performance Green Building in our climate zone will also have increased insulation levels, be air-tight, going to any length to minimize heat loss and will ideally incorporate a fair amount of thermal mass inside its envelope. This mass should have none to very little embodied energy. What comes to mind? Of course our traditional Adobe or Compressed Earth Blocks. This timeless material may prove again its validity in this new context of energy conservation and Green Building.

As the world’s thirst for energy and fossil fuels is increasing instead of decreasing (in 2005 China increased their oil import by 33%, for example) and the availability of cheap oil diminishes we will no longer be able to afford to burn whatever it is that we are burning. We must learn to increase the efficiency of our buildings to a level at which solar heating and thermal mass conditioning may provide the majority if not all of our thermal comfort needs. The building systems and technology to realize this are available today. Such homes are cost effective, super efficient, carbon neutral, beautiful and the most comfortable places you can imagine to live in.

( see also: Net- Zero Energy, Carbon Neutral, Passive House page ) (John, this should link to the Passive House page.)

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