Passive House Development and High Energy Efficiency Sustainable Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

The focus of this Special Issue of the journal Sustainability is on very low energy consuming buildings as exemplified by dwellings and other stock types, which adhere to the Passive House (or Passivhaus) standard. This approach has been evolving now for 25 years, following the first Passive House construction in 1990/1991; with the 19^th International Passive House Conference recently held in Leipzig in April 2015, clearly interest has not abated.

‘Passive House’ implies adherence to careful detailing in design and high levels of excellence in construction with the aim of controlling energy consumption to very low levels. In particular air flow must be carefully considered and assessed energy consumption should be below 15kWh/m²/year. Although initially devised for buildings in cold and temperate climatic conditions, the range of climates for which variations on Passive House design are now being proposed is very wide. Interest in the techniques is now global, having expanded from Europe and North America into new territories, such as China, and also with new elements and technologies beginning to be included in the methodological assessments.

Sustainability now offers the opportunity to publish the latest findings concerning Passive House and high-energy performance buildings. Papers are invited from researchers and practitioners in the field who utilize suitable scientific methodologies and techniques to investigate and then report findings on relevant aspects of these buildings. This could include aspects such as: planning; design; construction; performance; simulation; understanding by designers; attitudes of developers; reactions of occupants; investigations into developments of new techniques; and understandings of Passive House assessment methodologies.

The focus of this Special Issue will, therefore, be on explaining and demonstrating the energy performance achievements from the Passive House technological approach and similar ultra low energy building systems, with the purpose of bringing together knowledge gained over the last quarter of a century up to the present day. This is particularly relevant given the aim in Europe for near zero energy buildings (NZEB) in the next five years, aligned to the European Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings.

Prof. Adrian Pitts PhD
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

References:
Passivhaus Institute, PHPP – the Passive House Planning Package version 9, 2015
Janet Cotterell and Adam Dadeby, The Passivhaus handbook: a practical guide to construction and retrofitting buildings for ultra-low energy performance, Green Books 2012