With the state of Pennsylvania recently being the first state to enact tax credits for meeting Passive House standards, we should start to see a greater adoption of this excellent design and construction standard in the US. The Passive House approach is reportedly ten times more energy efficient than building code requires, cuts energy use by around 90 percent, yet only adds 10-percent to the cost of a new house. Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) is the US organization behind Passive House. A good update on how this works in the US, which has dramatically different climate realities than the EU, can be found in this recent PHIUS presentation: http://www.phius.org/NAPHC2014/Wright-NAPHC2014-Standards.pdf