Hours of Safety in Cold Weather

This briefing introduces the 'hours of safety' framework to quantify the resilience of building envelopes during power outages caused by severe winter storms, comparing various home construction standards from the 1950s to Passive House standards.

• The document proposes the concept of 'hours of safety' to fill a knowledge gap in quantifying how long homes can maintain safe indoor temperatures during power outages or furnace failures during extreme winter weather.
• Improving building envelope components, specifically insulation, windows, and airtightness, is identified as a critical strategy for climate change adaptation that also reduces utility costs.
• The framework evaluates resilience across a spectrum of building types, including homes from the 1950s and 1980s, those meeting the 2009 IECC Code, net-zero energy ready homes, and those meeting Passive House standards.

APA

RMI (2020). Hours of Safety in Cold Weather. https://rmi.org/resources/hours-of-safety-in-cold-weather/

Chicago

RMI. Hours of Safety in Cold Weather. 2020. https://rmi.org/resources/hours-of-safety-in-cold-weather/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Hours of Safety in Cold Weather |date=4 February 2020 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/hours-of-safety-in-cold-weather/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2020hours, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Hours of Safety in Cold Weather}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2020}, month = feb, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/hours-of-safety-in-cold-weather/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }