AECB collaborates with US Passive House Network and Building Transparency to launch the PHN PHribbon in North American market

Building Transparency is proud to partner with The Passive House Network (PHN) and the Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB) for the US launch of the PHN PHribbon, a toolbar add-on for Excel. Developed in association with the PHN, AECB and Building Transparency, 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.

Tim Martel, Certified Passive House Designer, Chartered Architectural Technologist AECB expert and course tutor on the AECB CarbonLite ™ Retrofit Course wrote PHribbon. It is an Excel add-on that makes using PHPP quicker and easier and draws on existing national and global database information for materials and products’ environmental impact. It estimates cradle-to-grave 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.

Ken Levenson, Executive Director of PHN said: “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 US.”

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.

Stacy Smedley, Chair and Executive Director of Building Transparency said: “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 the PHribbon furthers that mission. 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.”

Andrew Simmonds, CEO of AECB said: “Collaboration with PHN and Building Transparency marks a step-change in the AECB’s strategic goal to build more and stronger international partnerships. We enthusiastically welcome the positivity and synergy that is already flowing from this joint initiative.”