Largest Passive House in the World planned in Vancouver

When it comes to energy conservation, passive houses are a great method of contribution on the household level. What is a passive house? It is a voluntary standard of efficiency in a building, that aims to reduce the energy consumption to cool and heat the building and decreasing the ecological footprint. The city council wants Vancouver to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. In order to do so, the passive houses should increase drastically.


Here is a diagram that the professor showed us in my environmental management class. It outlines how passive houses conserve the energy by maintaining the inner temperature with less energy consumption. A passive design can decrease significantly or even eliminate the energy needed to keep a comfortable temperature in the house year round, no matter what season it is. And good news, it is also considered to be the most affordable way of constructing a building. Only downside is that walls and windows of a passive house is more expensive than a normal house but the heating system costs way less so it's still a great alternative.

There are about 1,150 passive buildings and about 40,000 passive homes in the world. The number is constantly increasing. The City of Vancouver aims to have all new buildings produce zero emissions by 2030.The tallest passive house towers are planned to be built in Vancouver by the end of 2022 and this is what it's gonna look like:



It's gonna be at 1400 Alberni Street in Downtown Vancouver. It is pretty exciting because I'm sure it's gonna inspire a lot of companies to take initiative and build more passive houses.

Right now the tallest passive building is in New York at Cornel Tech campus. Let's see if Vancouver can take the lead for the world's tallest passive building.

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