Passive building policy in Vorarlberg, Austria

[Piwoslaw]

I read in a magazine that the Austrian province Vorarlberg has a building policy which requires all new public funded buildings to be passive. I did some research and found the heating requirements for different building standards:

• Energysaving: 30-70 kWh/m2/year,
• Low Energy: 15-30 kWh/m2/year,
• Passive: below 15 kWh/m2/year.

To get an idea of what 'passive' really means, I did a quick calculation for our house. I got 175kWh/m2/year. I did a lot of rounding and guessing, so it may be off by 20%-30% in either direction, but it's still a whole order of magnitude more than even being close to passive. On the other hand, I've got room and motivation for improvement.

Here is more information on the sustainability policy of Vorarlberg.