Evaluating the economic feasibility of the Passive House in China

Abstract: The Passive House as a type of energy-efficient and cost-efficiency housing, has been implemented widely around the world, and made great contribution to energy saving and environment protection. Although the Passive House requires higher investment in early stage compared to conventional houses, it has many benefits including improving indoor climate and saving energy consumption. However, the development of Passive House in China has been slow due to the lack of information regarding the extra investment and benefits. To provide a clear insight on how the extra investment and benefits of the Passive House balance each other, this study establishes an evaluation model to identify and calculate the additional costs through the life cycle of the Passive House. With the cost and benefit calculated, we can also analysis the payback period to see how many years it takes to recover the extra investment. After the model is established, we evaluated a representative Passive House in Hebei, China. The result showed that the benefits of the extra investment outweigh the additional costs, and the payback period is approximately 12 years, which is acceptable for housing projects. The evaluation model not only provides the developers and consumers a tool to understand the costs and benefits, but also illustrate the economic feasibility of Passive House in China.