Our goal for the next phase of our building campaign is to build one of the first certified “passive house systems” in the United States. While it is the mission of the Charlottesville Waldorf Foundation to build a permanent home for the Charlottesville Waldorf School, it is our intention to build it as the "greenest campus in America.” The “passive house system” is primarily designed to reduce the carbon footprint in buildings by “super-insulating” the building shell. This provides a clear metric to define “green,” and targets an 75% reduction in energy use for the building compared with conventional codes. This allows for a dramatic and quick pay back in energy costs that will save the school needed resources. A “passive house design” is also a significant step forward to producing a net zero building- using very little energy off the electrical grid through solar orientation of the building and a heat exchanger which uses heat from inside air to warm fresh air from outside.