Homes contribute 22% of UK carbon emissions, 45% of which are primarily for space heating energy. Delivery of highly insulated homes, new build and retrofit, is needed to help meet the UK’s 2050 net zero carbon target. Similar policies are being adopted across the developed world to limit rising carbon emissions. Unfortunately, most new and retrofitted buildings use as much as 250% more energy than predicted by computer models at design stage, the so-called ‘energy performance gap’. Although emerging evidence suggests that buildings built to the low-energy Passivhaus standard do not demonstrate such a gap, data are often from small-scale forensic investigations. Here, we present the first large-scale systematic evaluation of this standard in occupied buildings using multi-year data from 97 UK Passivhaus dwellings spread across 13 sites. As frequency and type of data collection varies between sites, we adopt a pessimistic approach to the analysis by systematically over-estimating space heating demand in the presence of uncertain data. Results pooled across multiple years, show that mean observed space heating demand is 10.8 kWhm²a⁻¹ (SD 9.1) with no statistically significant difference against predicted demand of 11.7 kWhm²a⁻¹ (p = 0.43, d = −0.1). These results provide powerful evidence in favour of the Passivhaus standard as a reliable means of obtaining low-energy and low-carbon buildings and should be seen in the context that the space heating demand of the average UK home is currently about 145 kWhm²a⁻¹ and a new build home about 50 kWhm²a⁻¹.

房屋占英国碳排放量的22％，其中45％主要用于空间供暖能源。需要交付高度隔热的房屋，进行新建和翻新，以帮助实现英国的2050年净零碳目标。发达国家也采取了类似的政策来限制不断上升的碳排放。不幸的是，在设计阶段，大多数新建和翻新建筑的能耗比计算机模型预测的能耗高出250％，即所谓的“能源性能差距”。尽管有新的证据表明按照低能耗Passivhaus标准建造的建筑物没有显示出这种差距，但数据通常来自小型法医调查。在这里，我们使用分布在13个站点的97个英国Passivhaus住宅的多年数据，提出了对该建筑中的这一标准进行的首次大规模系统评估。由于站点之间数据收集的频率和类型各不相同，因此在存在不确定数据的情况下，我们通过系统地高估空间供暖需求来采用一种悲观的分析方法。多年汇总的结果表明，观测到的平均空间供暖需求为10.8 kWhm² a ^-1（SD 9.1）与预期的11.7 kWhm ² a ^-1（p = 0.43，d = -0.1）的需求无统计学差异。这些结果提供了强有力的证据有利于Passivhaus标准为获得低能源和低碳建筑，应该在上下文中可以看出，英国平均家庭的采暖需求目前约为145 kWhm的可靠手段的²一^{- 1}和一个约50 kWhm ² a ^-1的新房屋。