EPC RECAST partner, Ing. Jana Bendžalová (ENBEE), represented EPC Recast at the U-CERT roadshow in May:
Building Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) have been around for more than 10 years, underpinned by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), and they are poised to stay. In theory, they exist with a good reason – to indicate energy performance of the buildings we use in our daily lives. For buyers of real estate, EPCs are supposed to serve as a reference point for energy performance qualities of the property they are interested in, and hence as a tool for judging the value of their investment. For owners and property managers, EPCs should be a reference for assessing the existing condition of the building and support informed decision making in building maintenance, renovation, and management. Finally, for institutions on regional, national and European level, EPCs are conceived as a reference for assessing the overall qualities of the building stock and related policies.
The overall context is somewhat different now in 2022 from when EPCs were first introduced. Buildings are acknowledged as one of the key focus areas for delivering the European Green Deal and more specifically the Renovation Wave Strategy. Furthermore, finance is becoming more and more available and will reach in the coming decades the needed scale to digitally transform buildings not as a goal in its own right, but as means to an end for reaching by 2050 a healthy, safe, efficient and sustainable EU building stock. Fortunately, also all the “technical layer” ingredients are available, such as the set of CEN/ISO Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) standards and Horizon 2020 projects such as U-CERT project and its sister projects and moreover the EPBD is currently being revised.
At least in theory, it all sounds great. But does it really work? Is the value implied in theory supporting the implementation of policies and legislation behind EPC schemes being realised? How did the originally foreseen purpose of EPCs translate into reality? And what do people – from homeowners to EPC scheme developers and everyone in between – really think about the EPCs?
WATCH the U-CERT roadshow at EU level in English to get to know what resources and tools are ready to be immediately leveraged by those that benefit from building performance assessment and certification services (be they mandatory or voluntary).
