PH Above the Crease in NY Times!

Sadly, you won’t find it in Canadian newspapers. Nope you have to go south of the border to read news about the building method that’s taking off south of the 49th and the New York Times’ Alison Gregor nails it in her article last month about Passive House in New York. NYPH covers what the Real Estate section article got right, including the fact that vintage buildings are being successfully retrofitted to the standard. Even without and Environment section the paper, the NY Times still plugs passive house in the Home & Garden Section with this fresh article on Passive Homes. Clearly the Editor sees a trend in NY that Canadian news papers don’t see in Canada.

As much as we’d like to blame the Toronto Star, or the Globe and Mail for not covering Passive House and for continuously pushing the status-quo on ‘green’, it might have something to do with the fact that Canadians have lower energy costs and live in a country that currently sees itself as a resource-based economy and consequently, some Canadians aren’t building high performance homes as few homes in the GTA meet the Passive House Standard.

There are bright spots though. Places where high performance homes are being built tend to be places where no access to natural gas for heating exists and the hot bed in Canada is Nova Scotia, where regular home owners want good affordable built houses that don’t cost an arm and a leg to condition the living space. Natalie Leonard of Passive House E-Design has built the most Passive Homes in the country and she keeps churning them out like hot cakes.