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The passive house

The target of the passive-house standard, as defined by the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany, is to plan buildings that need so little heating energy that a conventional heating system is unnecessary.

For measuring this standard the following values have been defined. To be labelled a passive house, a building must fulfil these requirements:

• annual heating energy requirement at most 15 kWh/m²a or heating load limited to at most 10 W/m² (in relation to living space)
• total primary energy input at most 120 kWh/m²a