Doesn't sound all that passive to me

I live in an old building, built in the early 1860's. My condo is in a tacked on back wing, but it's no youngster. It was constructed in 1918. What is now my kitchen was a porch that was converted around 1980. 

It is not the most energy efficient building in the world, that's for sure, but it's solidly built. My heating/cooling is provided by a heat pump, a comparatively efficient method. Which is not to say that I don't have my moments. Last winter, when we had a nasty, brutish, but blessedly short cold snap, I had to set the temp to 72 to get it to keep things at 65 degrees. Brrrr. And a few years aback, after a prolonged but not so nasty and brutish cold spell, I had a monthly electric bill for $900. Grrrr. 

Other than in my greenhouse kitchen, I have shades/blinds on all my windows, which helps keep things pretty well regulated. And in my kitchen, I replaced some of the windows a few years ago and the change in winter warmth was remarkable.

All in all, I keep my home comfortable. I like to sleep cool, and I don't mind sitting around with a fleece and/or a shroud thrown over my shoulders. (Good practice for the (hopefully) moderately distant future.)

Back in my working days, I don't recall the environment being particularly comfortable/uncomfortable one way or the other - other that there tended to be thermostat battles between the men and women, as the men in suit jackets - ah, those were the days - wanted it super-chilly in the summer, and chillier than comfortable in the winter.  Sure, sometimes we had suit jackets on, too. But we also wore dresses, and skirts or slacks and blouses. I don't know any woman who didn't keep a sweater or two in her desk drawer to toss on when it was too damned cold. 

I'm sure that there are still raging thermostat battles. Even if men aren't suited up, men in general prefer it cooler indoors than do women.

But I wonder how those battles will play out in Passive Buildings.

Passive Buildings?

I never heard of it, either, until I saw an article on a new mixed use building (residential and office):

...in downtown Boston has become the largest “passive house” office space in the world, according to the Passive House Institute in Germany.

The 812,000 square-foot Winthrop Center office space passed multiple tests to ensure walls and windows insulate the building efficiently. The insulation and air-tightness are the main reasons the building uses 65% less energy to heat and cool compared to similar buildings. (Source: WBUR)

Winthrop Center is the silvery skyscraper - at 53 stories, a skyscraper by Boston standards, anyway - in the picture. (Personal aside: to the right, the reddish building is the Bank of America which is where, when it was the First National Bank of Boston, I met my husband.)

I'd never heard of passive buildings. Using 65% less energy sounds anything but passive. 

What's meant by passive is that a building is heated by passive means, such as collecting solar heat, rather than conventional "active" means, like the big old furnace in the basement. 

Oddly, it's only the office floors on the building that are certified as passive, not the residential floors. Not sure why that would be the case, other than that construction costs for passive buildings are higher than conventional new builds. But it seems odd, as a) everyone wants to be more energy efficient; and b) anyone who'll be living in the Winthrop Center is pretty darned well off.  Maybe the residential side will be certified passive at a later date. 

Anyway, this is a quibble. One of the big deals about the Winthrop Center Passive House office is the scale it's been implemented on. Passive Houses are usually just that: houses. Not big buildings. 

“It is an example for many other developers on how to do this, and it can be done,” said Rebecca Tepper, Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs secretary.

“We now have an opt-in specialized stretch code and we have many towns who have opted in. That's going to result in more and more buildings and houses like this,” she said.

In the city of Boston, buildings account for 70% of all carbon emissions. (In Massachusetts, they account for 30%.) So, yay, for trying to cut that down.

May all new builds follow the Winthrop Center model.

The problem here is that we have a lot of old buildings. And my neighborhood (Beacon Hill) is especially old. My block has had some gut renos over the last decade, but all those gut jobs were of buildings that went up in the 1860's when mine did. The only "new build" that comes to mind is the River House, a "modern" apartment building on Pinckney Street that, if I've got this right, is about 70 years old. 

Wonder what it would cost to retrofit this old house???