Sizzling All-Electric: Kenzi & Policy Transformation
Sizzling All-Electric: Kenzi & Policy Transformation

How did “The Kenzi,” an affordable housing building in the heart of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, achieve all-electric construction? Why did Passive House design make that achievable? Passive House buildings go hand-in-hand with on-site renewable generation and electrification, but how is this different than a typical high-performance building? Dive into the nitty gritty details to understand how this 50-unit age-restricted building’s design addressed a variety of ventilation, air tightness, and insulation details. We’ll share how the design and construction teams applied the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) standard in this groundbreaking example. In this session, discover how the Kenzi team designed and permitted solar-plus power storage with City of Boston’s blessing for emergency backup power instead of traditional fossil fuel generators. It’s not just Kenzi going electric passive in Massachusetts. Passive house adoption is off the charts. Massachusetts’ potent combination of pilot programs, utility efficiency incentives, and energy codes driving this trend can be brought to your state too. Learn how the cost of other categories of construction compare to traditional construction in the first seven affordable passive multifamily pilot projects in Massachusetts. And adapt what collectively has been learned in those developments to help your team on its passive house and high-performance building journey.