The Passivhaus sector meets on 8 and 9 November at the Palacio Europa in Vitoria to review the state of the national market. PAPIK Group will attend, with its focus on energy retrofit.
The calendar of the energy-efficient construction sector has a fixed date: the 4th Spanish Passivhaus Conference, held on 8 and 9 November at the Palacio Europa in Vitoria. The event brings together experts from across the country to analyse and debate the sector's progress, and PAPIK Group will attend to follow the standard's evolution nationally at first hand.
This edition offers a complete view of the current state of the Passivhaus market: financing, training, technologies and built examples. The connecting thread is energy retrofit, one of our specialities and one of the areas where the passive standard has the most ground to cover across a building stock that was, in large part, raised without any efficiency criteria.
The conference is structured into thematic blocks covering the key questions of passive building. An opening block places the Passivhaus movement in different geographical contexts, with an analysis of the national market as an opportunity for the present and future, alongside the latest research from the Passivhaus Institut on how the standard behaves in southern Europe, presented by Dr. Jürgen Schnieders.
Training and built experiences fill a second block, with the PHPP calculation tool taking centre stage through Micheel Wassouf. The PHPP is the reference spreadsheet for sizing and verifying the energy performance of a passive building, and it is the technical basis on which we work every Eskimohaus project.
The following blocks move into technology and the economic dimension, covering controlled ventilation, low-cost typologies and specific application cases, before closing with a block dedicated entirely to retrofit and Passivhaus, where interventions on existing housing and on facilities such as a school built in 1964 are presented.
A sector conference devoting its axis to retrofit confirms an underlying trend. New-build construction to passive criteria is well established, but the real challenge is the existing stock. Bringing an old building to comfort and consumption levels close to the passive standard demands precise technical knowledge, and it is the terrain where energy retrofit adds the most value.
The presence of a financial institution on the programme points in the same direction. Financing is one of the levers that decides whether a deep retrofit actually happens or remains an intention, and its inclusion in the debate signals a maturing market.
For a builder like PAPIK Group, these gatherings are not a formality. They are where results are compared, metrics are shared and the techniques we later apply to each house are reviewed. Following the programme and staying in contact with the rest of the sector's agents feeds directly into how we approach construction and the improvement of the built stock.
The passive standard is no longer proven by new buildings. It is proven when it manages to transform what already exists.