Out of the Ground Passive House -Commercial Office Building

https://newbuildings.org/?s=passive New Buildings Institute (NBI) has some of the best reports and analysis on low energy / net zero building data.  not sure if it exactly answers your question, but maybe a place to start?  and I have reached them on the phone previously...maybe contact them directly and let them know there is interest in that data? Best regards, Conor McGuire

I've looked at this a couple times and spoken with others and I have heard and seen the 5 to 10% range.  But, everything varies - some estimates are higher, others might be lower.  It's definitely something I'm going to be keeping track of on projects where we look at it.  This could be a good thing for the group to aggregate information on!   Other things to consider aside from upfront first costs are obviously decreased operating costs, potentially reduced labor costs if going prefab with walls, and prefab with walls can also cut schedule which also potentially saves on cost since time has a cost.  Also, sometimes people might forget to take into account downsized mechanicals for upsized envelope insulation, so that should definitely be factored into the premium.  Another piece is the baseline performance you have meet in the market you're in.  In MA we have many communities called "Stretch Code" communities where the code baseline is 10% better than IECC 2015, so that baseline level of performance is going to decrease the premium relative to somewhere the code isn't as stringent.  

2.4% tall Residential; Report: https://issuu.com/fxfowle/docs/final_report-170330-final Affordable housing:  McDonald has made it his mission to expand this model. To date, he’s contacted housing agencies in 40 states and leads presentations and meetings across the country. He also tracks the progress of Pennsylvania’s Passive House projects on a spreadsheet. “The premium to build to the Passive House standard was less than 2 percent,” he says. http://www.onionflats.com/ https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/how-affordable-housing-is-driving-passive-house-design_o   I couldn't quickly locate The House at Cornell Tech $/SF, but that's another one worth reviewing.  Keep in mind it on an island in NYC, so $/SF is surely impacted by that and the PH $ would need to be figured out.

Coming back to this Passive House cost conversation, Conor and I have been talking offline about it and the majority of what he has been seeing is more in the 2 - 3% premium range.  I've been told 5% is a safe and conservative estimate, but this article published this month in one of our local publications puts the range on commercial new construction at 0% to 3%, and uses the 5% - 10% range for residential: https://www.bisnow.com/boston/news/sustainability/boston-developers-push-limits-on-where-passive-house-standard-can-be-applied-94696?rt=64411 I don't know what I think about the 0% premium - not really sure how that's possible - but it does seem if you're going above 5% you're looking at other factors that are driving up your cost per square foot.  Keep in mind too this is new construction - I would like to start getting data on retrofitting buildings to passive house standards, which I'm much more interested in. On the topic of cost, this comes up in every conversation about anything sustainable.  I would be curious to hear of any strategies that anyone has used to successfully measure cost premiums and/or paybacks of their sustainability measures.  When someone asks me what the cost premium is to go from LEED Gold to LEED Platinum, all I feel like I can say is "it depends".  It depends on everything the building was going to do originally to meet LEED Gold and what set of additional strategies they select to get to Platinum. When someone asks the premium for LEED Gold in general, I still say "it depends".  It depends on what strategies the project was already going to pursue to meet the IECC 2015 energy code used in MA - and also to often meet the 10% additional energy performance beyond IECC 2015 in our "stretch code" communities - and then what other LEED strategies are being considered to get to Gold. We could do a per square foot comparison by taking a completed LEED Platinum or Gold building and comparing similar buildings in our portfolio by type and location, but I feel like there are so many reasons why those numbers might be misleading with our sample set of all LEED v4 projects being < 12 projects.   Ideally I would like to have two budgets for every sustainability project we have that would show the conventional building cost, the sustainability building cost, and the life-cycle costs of the added sustainability measures.   Has anyone come up with a good method for tracking this type of information?

A quick note on Passive House for Steven and others in the Boston area – the 12/12 COTE event will look at three large scale completed or underway Passive House projects. Should be a good event. https://www.architects.org/programs-and-events/committee-environment-35 Agree on cost stuff – the exact same building program for the same client will cost a lot more to achieve LEED Gold if it is on their suburban / rural campus instead of their urban campus if we aren’t going to achieve 10+ free LT credits. Most everything cost answer is really “it depends”. On an unrelated topic – Smith College has some students trying to estimate their scope three emissions from construction. I’ve found an old EPA report on the subject, but don’t have any actual data myself other than temp heat and power. Does anybody have GHG emissions data from construction they’d be willing to share with Smith? Ideally they’d like a generic MTCDE per SF or something like that and then would like to try and look more in-depth at some of their campus projects. If you want to share with Smith directly but not the group, I’m happy to put you touch with Dano (their sustainability director) directly. Thanks, Nathan Gauthier, Director – FM Integration and Sustainability E ngauthier@shawmut.com | C 617-515-6305 From: Steven Burke