Rendered unsaleable by the credit crisis, need to be recycled.  Mini-mcmansions need to be recyled into multifamily or multigenerational single family apartment buildings.  The addition of a solar cogeneration wall and roof on southfacing sides and ground source heating could even make these recycled mcmansions efficient.

For new construction:  This passive design is good, even applicable in colder northen regions with ground source heat envelope design.  This design gets the efficiency of an underground home, for homes built above ground.

For those lots of gas guzzlers, will they rust for 5 to 10 years before being ground up in a car shredder?  Or retrofit as plugin hybrids?  Retrofitting would allow a car company to claim they are "new", again?  Carbon fiber doors, hoods, fenders and so forth could lighten them, then plugin hybrid power plants could make them get 100+ mpg.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

This cuts to the heart and soul of our collective dilemma.

To clarify the NYT, I and others live in USA passive homes.  We have air-to-air heat exchangers, thick window shutters, thermal mass (aka concrete), passive solar gain, hot water preheat, and active dog body heat.  The comfort is extraodinary and heating costs are almost zero.  Solar access is not a prerequisite.  No solar here in the Seattle area forest Nov 15-Feb 15.  Passive still works holding in waste heat.  Just to clarify.

Your comment on using coal for heat is most disturbing.  Was that to be in home coal burners or coal power for heat?

What will large city-states do when natural gas is no longer available?  Are homes that need fossil heat sustainable or do they have shortened life expectancies?

Jobs program:

 Retrofit homes that can be salvaged.

 Replace homes that can not saved.

 Install district heating to replace gas lines.

 Capture waste heat from industry, burn biomass waste, collect summer sunshine, and employ seasonal heat storage (90% efficient).

Or burn coal and die.

is that despite the Internet, even educated Americans tend to be relentlessly inward-looking and parochial.

George Monbiot wrote about the Passivhaus concept in his last book, Heat.

Did none of you read that? I mean, he's one of the premier enviro jounalists/commentators in Europe, he writes in English, and rather well, but still so many 'well-read' American enviros don't bother accessing his stuff.

?

Cheers

Whiskerfish (who is even further away than George, and far, far less-read)

When my dog breathes out through his tail, curled up in the snow, sled dog style, moisture and warmth are trapped in the fur, then when he breathes in the new air, a portion of the water/warmth lost to the cold, dry air returns.

Pretty cool, we'll see if the Leopold Center adopts it.  That was quite a trail run.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

in columns, monbiot's talked about german and UK building standards many times in the two years since.

but it shows the political disconnect. the sanctioned conversation. US politics in its own bubble. US "enviros" very concerned with not appearing populist-radical. greens elsewhere have come to terms with needing an actual broad base of power to bring down dirty practices.

sounds like i'm about to make this about the green party, or the big duopoly, but no. the sword of wall street hangs over the head of everything here. acknowledged market failures of crazy size and scope -- housing bubble, credit bubble, global warming, resource destruction -- are treated, the next day, as market opportunities for the people who kept the money and didn't even have to apologize.

greens here are more compromised by market fundamentalism than the bankers. the bankers don't believe it.

Americans will never buy into "eco houses" unless it's government mandated. The majority of new construction is done in a completely unsustainable manner and it won't change unless there are laws that restrict or set specific standards for construction of new homes. Eco houses are still only on the minds of those whom label themselves environmentalists. The average American isn't concerned about how their houses are built or reducing it's impact. Climate change action will have to come from the top down and be made into laws otherwise the masses won't care. The reason is the same reason we have laws that make stopping at stop signs and speeding illegal. People won't police themselves.

I wrote about the Passivhaus concept before Monbiot did. And, for that matter, Amory Lovins wrote about it back in the 90s. So it is not just Europeans who the powers that be in our nation ignore. And it is not as if Europe has actually been successful environmentally. They do better than the U.S. does, but these days that is not a very high standard.  Europe fails by a smaller margin than the U.S., but they still fail.

As the architect of the first certified passive house standard building in North America, the `Waldsee BioHaus', I would like to add: they work!

Here is why. I just got the total 2008 energy use information for this 5,000 square feet building = 13,000kWh (or $1,100). This includes all the energy used for this school building/dormitory by up to 30 people. About 5,500 kWh (or $500) of this is used for heating in the icebox (over 10,000 heating degree days) of the lower 48 with winter temperature not moving above 0°F.

By the way - this building are also define a new level of comfort; cozy warm, fresh air and healthy environment - less is more to the point.