The Passive House (Passivhaus) The Passivhaus concept was developed by Dr Wolfgang Feist and Prof. Bo Adamson in the late 80’s and implemented in research in the 1990’s. The Passivhaus standard is a set of voluntary criteria for an ultra-low energy use home. Originally developed in Germany for houses and low-rise multi-unit residential buildings, the standard has been applied to houses in a range of other countries and to commercial buildings as well. Now that the Passive House concept is taking route in the US and having a significant impact on the building community’s discussion about how to best reach net zero in our different micro-climates, you don’t want to miss this brown bag. Speaker: Lance Wright Lance graduated from Auburn University with a degree in the Forest Ecology Honor’s Program in 1976 and worked with the U. S. Forest Service in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska before settling down in Colorado in the early 1980’s. Lance built his first energy-efficient house in Parker in 1998 and his low winter heating bills helped him convince his fellow Council members to pass a significant increase in the Building Code requirements for energy efficiency in the Town of Parker over the strong objections of the building community. Lance moved to Springfield, Missouri in 2004 and became the first US EPA Energy Star building partner in southern Missouri. After building Energy Star rated homes in Missouri for two years, Lance returned to Colorado and established Green Energy Man, Inc. to design and build energy efficient custom homes in the Denver area. With the establishment of the Passive House Institute, United States in early 2008, the Passiv Haus concept was introduced to America. Lance immediately signed up for training and was in the charter group of “Passive House Consultants” trained by the PHIUS in the fall of that year. Lance is currently one of only two people in Colorado to have gone through the Passive House training program and, as far as he knows, the only person to have attempted to actually build a Passive House
