I wanted to be a translator at one time. I've had Intro to Linguistics as a college class.

I genuinely have zero problem with people wanting to use the term passive house to refer to a distinct set of building techniques and passive solar to refer to a different set of building techniques. Living languages evolve. It's a known phenomenon.

And, yet, so far no one has suggested to me a better umbrella term than passive solar design.

I defined the term thusly in one of my comments here:

Passive solar design is about creating a home which needs little energy to stay at a comfortable temperature.

My best understanding of life, the universe and everything is that without energy from the sun, earth would be extremely cold. And also wind energy is a form of solar energy which arises from air movement caused by temperature differences.

So to my mind, any technique that tries to keep a home a comfortable temp using sunlight to warm it and air flow to cool it with a minimum of electricity, oil, and other energy sources is using passive solar. It's trying to primarily use energy from the sun in a passive fashion by means of elegant design suited to the local climate conditions.

I guess I need to start defining my terms up front on HN for this topic because I do understand why people want to make this distinction in building techniques, yet I still need an umbrella term for this and I don't currently know of a superior umbrella term to the one I'm currently using.