Passive Houses are not introduced by law or regulation - they are a voluntarily agreed standard. However, this standard is clearly and unambiguously defined: The Passive House Institute has formulated the criteria for Passive Houses for different building tasks (e.g. residential buildings, office- educational buildings).

These are exclusively so-called “functional criteria”, i.e. individual structural or technical details are not prescribed, but an overall coherent planning with a competently executed energy balance, elaboration of the details and documentation of the components is required.

This ensures that the designed building can really produce the results expected of it in practice. The measurement results of a large number of examined Passive House projects confirm this.