Residential buildings use 38 percent of total U.S. electricity and account for one-fifth of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. By 2050, an estimated 20 billion new square feet of home construction can either increase this footprint, or–through drastic improvements in energy efficiency–they can begin to transform the country’s housing sector to be sustainable, healthy, and affordable.

RMI’s Superefficient Housing Initiative (SHI) seeks to mainstream superefficiency in new residential design and construction, aiming to deliver housing that is at least 60 percent more efficient than today’s code at comparable costs.

SHI’s efforts have helped build healthy, low-cost, and comfortable single-family and multifamily units in:

• Affordable housing
• Campus housing
• Workforce housing
• Military housing
• Private housing developments at scale

SHI employs a three-pronged approach in its efforts: collaboration, innovation, transformation.

• SHI promotes collaboration by working with a diverse array of members of the housing sector. Together, RMI and partners have undertaken projects and efforts to transform housing thorugh supperefficient design, construction, and behavior.
  
  See examples of RMI's collaborative efforts:
  
  Aspen Forest Service Campus, Employee Housing [Page 18].
  Residential Energy Efficiency Leaders (REEL) Working Group
  Alliance for Residential Building Innovation
   
• SHI spurs innovation by challenging the housing community to test ideas and techniques--both old and new--in efficient home design and construction to prove that beautiful homes can be built economically.
  
  RMI's ongoing work in innovation:
  
  Superefficient Housing Design/Build Competition.
  Housing and community design charettes (see La Pine case study)
   
• SHI catalyzes transformation in the housing sector through data collection, the publication of case studies, and the dissemination of climate-responsive "solution sets" to encourage superefficiency's uptake in the housing sector as a whole.
  
  Reports and resources:
  
  
  • "Achieving Passivhaus Standard in North America: Lessons Learned" by James Brew, Principal Architect
  • Retrofit Depot
  • "Performance by Integrative Design"
  • "Superefficient Affordable Housing - Solutions to Hurdles"
     

  Related Content
   

  • Nice House, But Is It Legal?
  • Imagine a New Kind of Housing Competition to Help Meet a Growing Need
    
    

  Watch our Google Hangout: Making Permanently Affordable Homes