Building Transparency Partners has teamed with The Passive House Network (PHN) for the U.S. launch of its PHN PHribbon by AECB CarbonLite, a toolbar add-on for Excel. This add-on enables Passive House designers to calculate the embodied carbon of a given design within the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), a planning tool for energy efficiency. Integrated with the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), PHribbon gives users power to forecast the carbon emissions impact of their designs.
“As more leaders across the building industry are prioritizing a positive climate impact for their structures, by utilizing the PHribbon, designers can tackle both operational and embodied building carbon emissions within the PHPP tool, and comprehensively push for carbon neutral and negative buildings across the U.S.,” said Ken Levenson, executive director of PHN.
Written by Tim Martel, a Certified Passive House Designer and Chartered Architectural Technologist, and produced by the Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB), PHribbon is an Excel add-on that makes using PHPP quicker and easier. It draws on existing national and global database information for materials and products’ environmental impact. It calculates Whole Life carbon emissions, helps users build PHPP models and includes several useful tools and features.
The PHPP energy balance design tool contains everything necessary for designing a properly functioning Passive House, a building standard that is energy efficient, comfortable, affordable and ecological. The program prepares an energy balance and calculates the annual energy demand of the building based on the user input relating to the building’s characteristics.
PHribbon leverages existing information beyond just energy, pulling from Building Transparency’s EC3 database and EPA carbon figures for electricity, the end of life of materials and the end-of-life pathway.
