Ef­fi­ciency as the base for trans­ition

Pub­lished on 23 Janu­ary 2026

The 28th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­ence will fo­cus on solu­tions for a cli­mate-friendly and sus­tain­able build­ing stock. En­ergy-ef­fi­cient ret­ro­fits are par­tic­u­larly im­port­ant in this re­gard. An early-bird price is still avail­able. The con­fer­ence will also in­clude work­shops, ex­cur­sions and the Pass­ive House trade ex­hib­i­tion. Two spe­cial events will be cel­eb­rated in Es­sen: the 35th an­niversary of the first Pass­ive House build­ing and the 30th an­niversary of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tute.

Open press re­lease

Ef­fi­ciency is simply in­dis­pens­able

Pub­lished on 9 April 2025

The 28th In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce will take place in the Ger­man city of Es­sen in April 2026. The main theme of the con­fer­en­ce is "Driv­ing Trans­form­a­tion with En­ergy Ef­fi­ciency!": High en­ergy ef­fi­ciency is es­sen­tial to mak­ing our build­ings ready for the fu­ture. The con­fer­en­ce with its var­ied pro­gramme will take place in Es­sen's House of Tech­no­logy. The Call for Pa­pers has be­gun and will run un­til the end of June 2025.

Open press re­lease

Feed­back from the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te - On the re­vi­sion of the En­ergy Per­form­ance of Build­ings Dir­ect­ive

Pub­lished on 9 April 2020

The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te (PHI) wel­comes the European Uni­on's ef­forts to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions. PHI re­cog­nises the re­cent at­tempt to in­tro­duce more clearly defined Zero Emis­sion Build­ings and min­im­um per­form­ance stand­ar­ds in build­ing ren­ov­a­tion to im­prove the build­ing stock of the EU Mem­ber States to­wards cli­mate neut­ral­ity. However, we fear that, par­tic­u­larly in build­ing ret­ro­fits [LM1], the min­im­um re­quire­ments for the Mem­ber States will not be suf­fi­cient to re­duce the en­ergy de­mand of build­ings to such an ex­tent that they can be met with re­new­able sources only. We re­com­mend fur­ther spe­cif­ic­a­tions and more am­bi­tious re­quire­ments, spe­cif­ic­ally in build­ing ren­ov­a­tion.

To make the en­ergy sup­ply of build­ings com­pletely re­new­able, we must ac­count for all en­ergy flows, in­clud­ing house­hold ap­pli­ances or of­fice equip­ment and ex­pec­ted losses in sea­son­al en­ergy stor­age. Build­ings can then be planned and ev­al­u­ated for a re­new­ably sup­plied en­ergy fu­ture and op­tim­ised ac­cord­ingly. If im­ple­men­ted con­sist­ently, we can achieve more flex­ib­il­ity in ex­pand­ing re­new­ables, a lower grid load and great­er in­de­pend­en­ce from en­ergy sup­plies from non-European coun­tries. Thus a se­cure and sus­tain­able sup­ply can be achieved.

Thou­sands of Pass­ive House pro­jects and En­erPHit ret­ro­fits world­wide have been prov­ing for 30 years that this is pos­sible and can be car­ried out eco­nom­ic­ally.

Open state­ment

In times of Corona, Pass­ive House vent­il­a­tion is also ad­vant­age­ous

Pub­lished on 9 April 2020

Open state­ment

Po­s­i­tion state­ment - Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te of­fers troubleshoot­ing as­sist­ance

Pub­lished on 28 Novem­ber 2016

Open state­ment