City of Minneapolis: Fulfill your climate action commitment

Your neighbors in the Passive House building community, a group of building professionals, leaders and experts representing the world’s leading building energy standard, are asking you to join us in holding the City of Minneapolis accountable for fulfilling their Climate Action Plan.

On October 26, 2020, the City of Minneapolis Community and Economic Development department hosted a public presentation to introduce a new proposed policy for 1-3 unit affordable housing in Minneapolis. This policy is only reviewed every 5 years. There is a public comment period until November 17, 2020, which gives us a unique and brief opportunity to make our voice heard and support a push for Passive House in Minneapolis.

Though we are grateful the city desires to incentivize better construction, we are concerned that much city money will be spent on incentives that will achieve minimal results. The ZERH program level for home construction will only incrementally improve energy efficiency [per Passive House energy modeling analysis], but nowhere near the level necessary to fight Climate Change and enable a Climate-neutral energy infrastructure. Therefore, we feel that now is the time to raise our voices and ask for our representatives to do better.

Please sign this petition and ask the City of Minneapolis to support a strategy that follows the science and can meets the Minneapolis’ Climate Action Plan. We would propose the following:

1. Raise the bar
Make the US Department of Energy Zero Ready Homes Standard (ZERH) the minimum standard for all new one to three-unit affordable residential construction projects which receive funds from the Minneapolis Homes program

2. Only incentivize the best in class standards
Given the minimal performance improvement of ZERH over the current status quo (Enterprise Green Communities), we petition that the Minneapolis Homes Financing program only financially encourage development beyond policy for homes built to the Passive House standard. The proposed up to $90,000 incentive should only be used for best-in-class standards such as Passive House that require third party review and certification to prove the delivery of the best in class energy efficiency.

3. Passive House standards also lowers energy bills drastically for residents and improves air quality, which also addresses important equity and human rights issues in affordable housing.