Building Transparency Partners with Passive House Network to Launch National Carbon Emissions Tool

PHN PHribbon tool leverages EC3 data to forecast the carbon emissions impact of a building’s design

Building Transparency is proud to partner with The Passive House Network (PHN) for the U.S. launch of its PHN PHribbon by AECB CarbonLite^TM, 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), an easy-to-use planning tool for energy efficiency. Integrated with the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), PHribbon gives users unparalleled power to forecast the carbon emissions impact of their designs.

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.

“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.

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.

“Building Transparency’s mission is to provide the open access data and tools necessary to enable broad and swift action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon's role in climate change. Partnering with PHN to support programs like PHribbon furthers that mission,” said Stacy Smedley, Chair and Executive Director of Building Transparency. “We are proud to work with PHN to integrate EC3’s 50,000 materials records into the tool to help clarify whole life carbon emissions for a building’s design and influence positive procurement decisions.”

Learn more about PHN PHribbon or schedule a demo here.

About Building Transparency

Building Transparency is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides open access data and tools that support broad and swift action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon’s role in climate change. Formed in 2020, Building Transparency hosts, manages and maintains the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) tool, which provides thousands of digitized EPDs in a free, open-source database, and Tally, the nonprofit’s Life Cycle Assessment Tool. Building Transparency strives to provide the resources and education necessary to promote adoption of the EC3 tool, including through the official materialsCAN program, and works with global policymakers to shape a better building future.

About PHN

The Passive House Network (PHN), formerly known as NAPHN, is a 501(c)3 that provides Passive House high-performance building education and resources to professionals across the U.S. that transform how they think and work with buildings. PHN provides professionals a complete skill set to reliably produce new and renovated buildings that use dramatically less energy for effective and affordable climate action.

About AECB

The UK based Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB) is the leading network for sustainable building professionals in the United Kingdom founded in 1989. Membership of the AECB includes local authorities, housing associations, builders, architects, designers, consultants and manufacturers. It delivers the AECB CarbonLite™ Training Programme and has developed a suite of industry leading building standards including the AECB Retrofit Standard.

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