Phius Co-Executive Director Katrin Klingenberg reflects on 2024 and examines what is on the horizon in 2025.
It is that time of year again – the new year. For us here at Phius there is a distinct rhythm to the year. The organization we have built together has solidified and diversified to maximize our mission’s impact: creating buildings that are good for people and the planet commonplace as quickly as possible in as many places as possible.
Last year was a year of major progress for us. The world we envision started taking shape in front of our eyes in Massachusetts with the Specialized Opt-In Stretch Energy Code going into effect in cities comprising more than half the state’s population. All multifamily and commercial buildings above 12,000 square feet in those jurisdictions are now being built to passive building standards, meaning they are super efficient and either net-zero or zero-energy ready.
Phius Certified 79 projects this year – a new milestone for us. The majority of those are large multifamily and commercial projects amounting to more than 1.5 million square feet. And that isn’t counting the 133 projects and more than 4.4 million square feet of projects that were Design Certified in 2024.
To support the building industry in the Northeast, we experimented with a new conference format this past year. The Phius Pro Forum, held in Providence, Rhode Island, was smaller than PhiusCon, with an increased focus on detailing and specific proven successful solutions, encouraging more experienced practitioners to share their hard-won lessons with the many younger professionals stepping up to the plate as the new codes take hold in the region.
And, as part of a two-prong strategy and a first for us, we also partnered with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to widen the circle by bringing Phius projects and workshops to the Greenbuild conference in Philadelphia this past fall.
And boy, were both events successful!
More projects, wider reach and impact also mean scaling up for us. Our expansion and growth continued yet again in 2024. Full-time staff grew to 30 and necessitated more organizational infrastructure.
For us it was year two of a significant expansion of our organizational foundations such as financial and HR systems. We refined roles and differentiated tasks to optimize them and do more faster with less by tapping into synergies without sacrificing quality – our specialty not only in high-performance and zero-energy buildings. It is all about systems design and thinking – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
My favorite organizational highlights of the year included Lisa White being named Co-Executive Director and Kimberly Llewellyn being appointed as the new President of the Phius Board of Directors. What a year!
And that takes us to 2025 – the world we want! And it is time. We are finally here.
We have proven on a large scale that our vision can be accomplished cost competitively while meeting climate goats – a proposition developers can no longer ignore.
We have engineered the win-win. It is time to deploy and expand vigorously.
In addition, we are always looking ahead to accelerate the market transformation. We are implementing and paving the way for cutting-edge new initiatives that will help to do just that. Here are the ones I am most excited about for 2025 and beyond:
A long time coming, the absolutely fabulously better WUFI Passive in the cloud is finally here. It is faster, more user friendly, more cost effective, and boasts better functionality. A customized design and verification tool to manage workflows and team communications is key to success. Look for details this month, including the launch webinar Jan. 14!
Our reimagined retrofit standard is off to the races. Many larger projects are already underway – it represents a completely new and encouraging building certification framework that optimizes for operational AND embodied carbon while assuring resilience and survivability.
We are looking forward to the deployment of a policy/incentive template based on the Massachusetts example to implement similar stretch energy codes in other states.
The world we want is here. I can’t wait to connect with you all at PhiusCon 2025!
