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Zero-Emission Buildings Rising in EU

In May 2024 the European Union adopted an updated Energy Performance of Buildings Directive that requires all new residential and non-residential buildings to be zero-emission buildings (ZEBs) as of January 1, 2028 for buildings owned by public bodies. This requirement will apply to all other new buildings as of January 1, 2030, with some possible specific exemptions. A ZEB is defined in the directive as being one that has no on-site carbon emissions from fossil fuels and a very high energy performance.

“We're dropping the nearly, so we're going from nearly to zero, and the ‘E’ changes from energy to emissions,” says Tomas O’Leary, managing director of MosArt, a Passive House architecture, consulting, and certification firm based in Rathnew, Ireland. While he concedes that these changes may seem pedantic, the shift in language is actually quite important. “We're basically going from recognizing that we've been focused on operational energy up to now to that we need to think of the fuller gamut of all of the emissions, not just operational, but embodied,” he explains.

Tomas O'Leary at the UK Passivhaus Conference in September 2024.
Tomas O'Leary at the UK Passivhaus Conference in September 2024.

The new regulations are going to ratchet up the energy efficiency of buildings even tighter, while also requiring that the remaining energy is going to have to be covered by renewable energy generation—either on-site or nearby—or district heating, again with some exceptions. The ZEB directive also addresses circularity and resource efficiency as critical aspects of minimizing buildings’ whole-lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, and a requirement for calculating their lifecycle global warming potential.

“That's a big, big change coming down the track, and the great thing is Passive House is set up for that,” notes O’Leary, adding, “For people who are designing and about to submit for a building permit, they're going to have to give that very serious consideration. That time is going to go by like the click of a finger.”

There are a little more than three years before the ZEB requirements go into effect for public buildings, which indeed isn’t much time to build up the level of expertise needed to meet them. Fortunately, at least in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the last few years has seen a noticeable rise in both Passive House expertise and in the construction of larger scale Passive House projects, partly in response to regulations and partly to other market forces.

“I remember clearly, 10 years ago, 50 units was a big scheme,” explains O’Leary, whose firm has grown to include 18 Passive House designers and four Passive House certifiers. “Now, typically we would have developers coming to us with a 500-unit scheme.” One of MosArt’s current projects, which it is co-Passive House designers on with Henriksen Studio, is a 46-story multi-purpose development designed to provide student accommodation and commercial spaces in the Canary Wharf area of London.

He attributes some of that scale shift to environmental and social governance (ESG) mandates governing financing sources. “Pension funds are insisting that their monies are invested in high performance buildings, and they don't want greenwashing,” he states. Relying on a science-based certification that has a proven track record of energy savings and building performance, such as Passive House, avoids a potential greenwashing claim.

“It’s well known that there's a performance gap with building-regulations buildings,” says O’Leary. Various studies in the UK and Ireland have put that gap between modeled energy use and actual energy use at between 38% and 50%, so that a standard home constructed to just meet building regulations ends up using up to 50% more energy than was predicted by the building-regulations model. “You can't keep defending that,” he concludes.

Above rendering courtesy of Urbanest.

Author: Mary James
Categories: Policy, News