I think passive houses were a hope for decarbonisation when solar power was very expensive, usable grid storage battery nonexistent, and heat pumps, unreliable.

I think passive houses were a hope for decarbonisation when solar power was very expensive, usable grid storage battery nonexistent, and heat pumps, unreliable. These days at least here in Europe, most of the time a climate-friendly home can be built without going to extremes of thoroughly retrofitting a home, or building a new one because "passivhaus" standard is sometimes impossible to retrofit to. Sure some heat insulation measures help, but main thing is switching to electric heating using a heat pump and it already lowers carbon footprint a great lot vs fossil fuel boiler heating.