what is a passive house?

Passive House is a building that meets a specific, certifiable performance standard built around five technical principles: Continuous Insulation, Airtight Envelope (verified by blower door test), elimination of thermal bridging, high-performance windows/doors, and balanced mechanical ventilation with heat/energy recovery (ERV/HRV). The overall goal for building a passive house is to live in a highly comfortable, healthy, and pleasant home with minimal energy use and carbon footprint, providing long term benefits and value.  

Going beyond designing buildings with passive house design principles in mind would be actually pursuing a certification from Passive House Institute, which requires meeting both qualitative and quantitative standards in design and construction through verification using energy modeling tool PHPP (or WUFI Passive) and a third-party field test/ commissioning. This ensures that actual construction meets building design intent, which provides both high-performance and resilience.