A Comparison of Building Envelope Performance Levels Between Ontario, Denmark, Germany and the Passive House Standard, in the Low-Rise, Residential Context

This research compared and analyzed where the Ontario Building Code rates in the low-rise, residential sector in terms of its: in comparison to Denmark, Germany and the Passive House Standard. This was analyzed to see how Ontario compared against other world renowned energy efficient regulations and where or if there was room for improvement. For this, HOT2000 and THERM were utilized on all four of the reference standards, where both of these programs were managed in a way to compare the results of ‘typical’ building envelopes and the current regulation from each of the standards. These results were then able to provide a whole home’s heating and air conditioning energy use in the Greater Toronto Area climate. Overall, the results illustrated Ontario homes consume the most energy for both typically constructed homes and homes utilizing the minimum requirements. In addition to this, Ontario also had the least performing building envelope connection details. In total, the Passive House performed at the highest level followed by Germany, Denmark and then Ontario.