By Jay Fox

PhiusCon has long been the biggest Passive House conference in the United States. More than just being an exceptionally large conference that provides a stage for some of the most important developments in high-performance building, the event also gives members of the Passive House community from North America and beyond a chance to meet in person. As vital as virtual and regional in-person events may be to foster the growth of the Passive House community, large-scale events like PhiusCon create a sense of global cohesion. They are a reminder that there are thousands of people around the world doing the difficult work required to make buildings cleaner, healthier, and more resilient.

Nationwide Growth

These events also tend to grow each year, and there is little doubt that PhiusCon 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona, will surpass this year's event in attendance. Even with headwinds at the federal level, the high-performance building community is expanding and Phius has grown to provide it with trellis-like support. As Phius Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director Katrin Klingenberg noted during the opening session on the morning of October 7, the organization’s staff has increased from perhaps a dozen in the early 2020s to nearly 40 today.

The number of new Phius members and Phius projects has also increased dramatically. As Phius Co-Executive Director Lisa White and Phius Certification Program Director James Ortega noted, there were close to 2,800 active Phius professionals at the end of 2024, including:

• Phius Certified Consultants: 1360

• Phius Certified Builders: 1199

• Phius Certified Raters: 89

• Phius Certified Verifiers: 125

• Phius Certified Trades People: 9

In 2024 alone, the organization welcomed 520 new professionals, and 460 have joined so far this year.

Meanwhile, incentive programs to encourage passive building exist in a dozen states, including:

• California

• Colorado

• Connecticut

• Illinois

• Massachusetts

• Minnesota

• New Jersey

• New York

• Rhode Island

• Texas

• Vermont

• Washington

Twenty-one states’ housing finance agencies currently include Passive House certification within their qualified allocation plans (QAP) for low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC). These incentives to build to Passive House standards have resulted in a surge in Passive House construction, most famously in Pennsylvania.

Phius's goal of making healthy buildings the default rather than the exception cannot be accomplished overnight. It takes a tremendous amount of patience, fortitude, and coordination. These are all attributes that that aptly describe Phius.

What the organization has built, particularly in recent years, is nothing short of astounding. It is a potent reminder that just a handful of people can drive change if they have enough dedication (and data), and if they cultivate what Klingenberg described as a “culture of performance and a culture of purpose.”

It is far more than a certification standard.

However, there were two takeaways that had less to do with design or building science and more to do with finance, and they deserve special attention.

Most people reading this have bought into the idea that, in the words of Tom Bassett-Dilley, “We should build every building passive, because they’re more efficient and they’re more resilient.” However, it can be difficult to square this sense of purpose with real-world financial restraints. There are projects where the budget has been set and the additional upfront costs of passive building, even if within the range of 1% to 3%, make seeking certification unfeasible.

Sharing Equity

This was just one of the problems that presented itself to Madison-based Threshold Development Group as they were budgeting 252 Dunning, the first market-rate Phius project to be certified in the state of Wisconsin. “It was nothing but a series of obstacles,” said Tyler Krupp Qureshi, the development lead for Threshold, during their session on Tuesday.

Krupp Qureshi was joined by Sean Meyers, a licensed architect and CPHC who oversees development activities at Threshold; Kara Haggerty Wilson, an architect and CPHD with the project’s Passive House Consultant, Onion Flats Architecture; and Sean Size, a CPHB with Threshold Builds. Their presentation, “If You Make It, You Own It,” described how the team overcame each new obstacle and how they managed to use "creative financing" to reduce capital costs and complete the project.

One of the most creative methods was to give members of the construction team equity in the building in lieu of construction fees. Ultimately, it allowed Threshold to reduce total development costs by 2.7%. It also created a more cohesive team with more shared interests. After all, if the people working on the jobsite have a stake in the long-term success of a development, rather than a financial incentive to simply deliver the project and move on to the next one, then their motivations will align better what that of the owner.

Disdain for Simple Payback

The other takeaway that deserves special attention came up during the final keynote address by Credit Human CEO Steve Hennigan, who provided a thought-provoking challenge of one of the more common heuristics within the world of real estate finance: simple payback. It’s a simplified calculation that real estate professionals use to gauge the value of any improvement to a property over a set timeframe (usually 10 years). For lack of a better term, it’s napkin math.

Unfortunately, the financial framework the napkin math represents is how energy efficiency is evaluated, which leads to the undervaluation of durability and efficiency. It also avoids three fundamental truths:

• Entropy exists

• The physical world is comprised of non-linear systems

• Compounding effects become more pronounced as time goes on

Every building system begins to degrade once it is installed. Its continual degradation will cause it to be progressively less efficient. As other building systems degrade, the cumulative effects become compounded, requiring greater and greater amounts of energy to operate the building. Concurrently, Hennigan notes that electricity prices have consistently (but, again, non-linearly) risen for decades and will continue to rise. (While the inevitable rise in electricity costs may be debatable in the very long term, it does seem likely for the foreseeable future.) Taken together, this means the building will need more and more energy to run and that energy will only get more and more expensive. These costs will compound over time and become astronomical by the time the building reaches middle age.

For Hennigan, owners can avoid these costs by investing in net-zero energy upgrades from the beginning. This entails:

• Building more durably to slow entropy/system decay

• Building more efficiently to reduce operating costs

• Using onsite renewable energy to meet the (now reduced) energy needs of the building

Hennigan makes the case that if the cost to upgrade the building to net-zero energy is less than the total energy costs, then the upgrade is financially prudent. In other words, thinking of the total utilities costs to operate a building over the long-term should be part of any equation when penciling out the finances of a project. When it is, a net-zero energy building is far less expensive than a code-built building.

The 2025 Phius Passive Projects Design Competition

Finally, the 2025 Phius Passive Projects Design Competition winners were announced at the event. Best overall project was awarded to Betty Greene Apartments in Boston, Massachusetts. The project won several awards, as did Utile, the architects behind the building. Seven additional categories included both winners and one honorable mention each. These categories were: single-family, Source Zero, high-rise multifamily, low-rise multifamily, affordable housing, retrofit, and commercial/institutional. There were another six categories with one award winner each: public space excellence, student housing recognition, international recognition, excellence in urban renewal, student design recognition, and best project by a young professional (35 years of age or younger).