Swedish city builds 'passive house'

As a part of ambitious CO2 reduction targets, passive housing is catching on across Europe in order to eliminate CO2 emissions by 2050.

Even though the past three winters have been extremely cold in the south of Sweden, residents who live in the two new high-rises (funded by the city of Växjö) haven't suffered, even though they do not have radiators to heat their homes, because of the passive-house style. 

These are the eight-story passive housing options in Växjö. Tey feature wood frames and thick walls to keep human genearted heat in, and the cold out. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sweden-passive-housing-co2-reduction-targets

The big risk of these homes isn't that they get too cold, but that they have a larger risk of getting too hot in the summer. 

These building of these new high-rises only cost the city 5-10% more than using regular building standards. The construction cost more than planned because workers needed to learn new skills, but now the city is using these newly trained construction workers to renovate other buildings.

The Swedish government is following a more difficult CO2 reduction plan than the rest of the European Union. While the EU aims for a 20 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, with the baseline being 1990, Sweden plans  for the same reduction, but their baseline is 2008.  

These buildings even recycle wastewater which contains valuable heat.