In a full-throttle effort to simplify the adoption of Passive House-friendly policies, the Passive House Network (PHN) recently released its report, Stepping Up to Passive: Policies We Want. The report summarizes successful approaches adopted in diverse jurisdictions across North America, with ample links to the specific code language that was used. This report is a follow up to the network’s 2022 report, Policy That Works, which fleshed out how and why certain regions are seeing surges in their local markets’ adoption of Passive House.
Stepping Up to Passive sketches out policy pathways that lead to and ultimately land on the revision of baseline codes so that they deliver Passive House performance. The practical steps this brief lays out include alternate compliance pathways that eliminate the burden of developing two distinct energy models, various incentive programs to overcome market inertia, and exemplary reach and stretch codes. This brief lives up to its name, being short and easily digestible, and its true value lies in the very useful code language links—just crying out for the exercise of the copy and paste functions.