Passive House Schism Leaves U.S. in Limbo

The international Passive House Institute (PHI) has severed its ties with the Passive House Institute U.S. (PHIUS), as PHI’s Wolfgang Feist accuses the U.S. body of compromising the Passive House standard. PHIUS, for its part, is calling Feist’s open letter “an act of sabotaging” the Passive House standard, and is working to mollify certified Passive House designers and projects whose credentials may be caught up in the dispute. It turns out that while the Passive House standard has been admired for its simplicity, the relationships behind that are quite another thing.

Not everyone, it seems, was taken off guard by the new developments. “It’s been like watching a train wreck coming,” said Jamie Wolf, principal of Wolfworks and a PHIUS-certified designer. He told EBN that given the “swirling background of allegiances and betrayals” that has characterized PHIUS for a year or more, “it was not a question of if, but when, something like this was going to come to pass.”