CEPHEUS a project involving the construction and scientific evaluation of ca. 250 housing units built to Passive House standards in five European countries has set itself the following goals:
To demonstrate technical feasibility (in terms of
achieving the targetted energy performance indexes) at low
extra cost (target: compensation of extra investment cost by
cost savings during use) for an array of
different buildings and designs implemented by architects
and developers in a variety of European
countries;
To study investor-purchaser acceptance and
user behaviour under real-world conditionsfor
a representative range of buildings;
To test the
implementability of the Passive House quality standard
throughout Europe with regard to cost-efficient planning and
construction;
To provide opportunities for both the
lay and the expert public to experience the Passive
House standard hands-on at several sites in
Europe;
To give development impulses for the design
of energy- and cost-efficient buildings and for the
further development and accelerated market introduction of
individual, innovative technologies compliant with Passive
House standards;
To create the preconditions for
broad market introduction of cost-efficient Passive
Houses;
To illustrate, for the concrete example of the
Hannover-Kronsberg subproject, the potential of
the Passive House standard to provide a basis on which it is
possible to meet the energy requirements of new housing in a
manner that is both cost-efficient and, in sum over the
whole year, produces zero greenhouse gas
emissions (climate neutrality criterion);
To present
this sustainable fully primary-energy and climate neutral
approach to the energy supply of new housing developments
at the EXPO 2000 World Exposition in Hanover, in
conjunction with all CEPHEUS subprojects.