Passive House Canada Conference 2019

Moderator: Ted Kesik

Embodied carbon and real zero carbon building
Chris Magwood, Endeavour Centre

If we are attempting to prevent runaway climate change, our buildings must strike a balance between embodied carbon emissions – created during the harvesting and manufacturing of materials – and operational emissions. There's a lot to consider, including the carbon intensity of the fuel source, the carbon intensity of the materials and the operational efficiency. This presentation compares multiple scenarios for the same four-story, eight-unit residential building, and shows how the same building can either be a climate change driver or a climate change cure by striking the right carbon balance at the design stage.

Resilience Planning in Passive House Design
Alexander Hay, Risk, Resilience & Security Planner, Southern Harbour
Bala Gnanam, Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Toronto Area (BOMA Toronto)

The combination of Passive House with resilience planning allows one to realise far greater benefit than their sum. To be sustainable, you must be resilient. A high performance envelope enables resilience by buying time when resources are most critical during an event. Conversely, resilience planning identifies what design arrangements are required where to what purpose. High performance in practice is realized through a synergy of resilience planning and building/ envelope design.