Need a BERDO Plan? Passive House Standards Make Compliance Easy.

Boston's BERDO (Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance) requires owners to answer a hard question: how do you design a building today that stays compliant as emissions caps tighten through 2050? For projects built to Passive House standards, the answer is simple — you already are.

This 28,000 SF multifamily building proves it. Modeled to the Passive House Institute's Low Energy Building standard using PHPP V10.6, this all-electric building isn't just meeting today's requirements — it's already ahead of where BERDO's limits will be decades from now.

The graph tells the whole story at a glance. BERDO's allowable emissions limit (red dashed line) steps down every five years, tightening the compliance bar all the way to 2050. Meanwhile, the reference building's modeled emissions (green solid line) stay flat — and already sit below where the regulation will be in 25 years. No future retrofit. No moving target. Just a building that was designed once, correctly.

That flat line isn't luck — it's the result of two design decisions:

• All-electric, zero combustion. No fossil fuel use means no exposure to the biggest source of emissions volatility.

• Ultra-low energy use. At just 17.5 kBtu/ft²-yr, the building's EUI is a fraction of typical code-built multifamily construction — which insulates it from tightening grid-emissions assumptions over time.

The numbers back it up: 142,875 kWh/yr (487,508 kBtu/ft²-yr) in total site energy, an EUI of 17.5 kBtu/ft²-yr, and GHG emissions of just 14.0 MT CO2e/yr — or 0.50 kg CO2e/ft²-yr. That's the performance data behind the flat green line above.

Bottom line: BERDO's limits will only get tighter. Buildings designed to Passive House standards are already performing below where those limits will land in 2050. For owners building a BERDO compliance plan, Passive House isn't an added cost — it's the plan.