Air movement plays a major role in how homes feel thermally throughout the year.
Residential Performance Comparison
Passive House and NatHERS both examine residential energy performance, but they use different methodologies, produce different outcomes and serve different roles within an Australian building project.
NatHERS is Australia’s national home energy-rating framework. Its thermal assessment models the predicted heating and cooling needs of a dwelling and expresses the result as a star rating between zero and ten. NatHERS assessments are commonly used to help demonstrate residential energy-efficiency requirements under the National Construction Code, subject to the pathway adopted in the relevant state or territory.
Passive House is a separate voluntary building standard. It combines energy balancing through the Passive House Planning Package, known as PHPP, with defined requirements relating to the building envelope, airtightness, windows, thermal bridges, controlled ventilation and construction verification.
This comparison focuses on where the systems overlap and where their boundaries differ. For a complete explanation of each framework, see the NatHERS Knowledge Hub and the Passive House in Australia guide.
