The construction industry is now facing a major change. The European commission has decided that near-zero buildings will be built from 31 December 2020 onwards. Boverket has tried to adapt the rules based on Swedish construction and has annually tried to set stricter requirements regarding energy management. One way to reduce energy use is by building passive houses.
Building customers are those who order buildings and largely determine the construction design of their buildings. Following stricter requirements from the authorities, building customers need to sort out alternatives that can benefit them in the future, both economically and environmentally. The economy and costs, but now also the environmental impact, have a major impact on the choice of building.
A survey was conducted where the purpose was to find out what the building customers think and do in construction of new buildings, the proportion of types of buildings produced and the organizations preferences regarding new buildings. The survey included building-customers that worked in municipal local administrations, public housing companies, private- and state real estate companies and in the region.
Most of the respondents for the various building customers believe that their organization prefer a higher production cost which entails lower operating costs. The building customers who do not build passive houses (80%) explain that this is partly due to high production costs, new technology and high demands on the building. But a large amount of these organizations can imagine building passive houses in the future.
Passive houses are more expensive to build but have lower operating costs and in a large majority of cases also lower life cycle costs. Through lower energy consumption and certified passive houses, the concept is also better environmentally than for conventional houses. Life cycle analysis is used to a great extent, which calculates a building’s total environmental impact. However, the tool leads more to the option “type of environmentally certified building” being chosen before passive houses.
Building customers’ answers to the questions do not show up in the buildings that are erected. The answer alternatives seem to favor new construction of passive houses. However, passive houses are at least as complicated and extensive to build as conventional buildings and most of the building customers organizations give several different reasons of why passive houses are not built. Clients of completed passive house projects have, however, had positive comments about their passive houses.