Embodied carbon and energy in Passive House constructions

The next iPHA webinar will take place on Wednesday, August 4 and will feature the Passive House Institute’s Benjamin Krick, and Freelance Architectural Technologist and Passive House Designer Tim Martel.

In the first half of the webinar, Benjamin Krick will explore how a life cycle assessment must be designed in order to obtain meaningful results in regard to the demand for manufacturing and operating energy. The Passive House Institute is currently working on this issue as part of the EU-funded project outPHit. Within the framework of the EN 15978 standard “Sustainability of buildings – Assessment of the environmental performance of buildings”, this presentation provides a proposal on how different wall constructions can be compared with each other in this respect.

The second half of the webinar will feature Tim Martel presenting on PHPP and his tool PHribbon. PHPP has a list of materials in the U-value tab and areas for thermal elements in the Areas tab. PHribbon combines these with CO2 figures from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to calculate Embodied CO2. It also adds windows, PV, non-thermal elements such as roof finishes, internal walls, upper floors and services such as Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) and MVHRs to this. Tim will demonstrate how the process works within a new tab in the PHPP, and also how PHribbon matches materials for the user to confirm. PHribbon is currently available for the UK/Ireland. Soon it will be available for the USA and Canada, with further options being explored.​​​​​​​