Energy certificates are not good enough
Many energy performance and display energy certificates (EPCs and DECs) are not good enough, according to senior government officials.
A conference held at CIBSE’s hq in Balham last week heard that several government departments were “wobbly” about the effectiveness of the certificates and were reluctant to use them to shape future energy and low carbon policies.
“EPCs and DECs should be an excellent tool for getting us from where we are to where we want to be with buildings,” said Peter Matthew, deputy director of sustainable buildings and climate change at the CLG, who chaired the conference.
He added that the certificates were designed to provide the “bedrock” for future initiatives, but that he had a tough job on his hands to convince government colleagues to back them.
“We need to build confidence in EPCs and DECs – not just for the Government and the environment, but also for your industry,” he added.
Paul Edwards of property developer Hammerson said early EPCs were “a disaster” because the Government misjudged how many buildings would need them and the process was rushed. He also condemned the standard of air conditioning inspections and the amount of impractical or inappropriate advice some inspectors had given to building operators.
He said DECs should have been rolled out first as they provide the most meaningful energy data. “You got this the wrong way round,” he told the CLG.
However, he said the process was improving and eventually EPCs would set a benchmark for energy standards that would establish a commercial value for sustainable buildings and provide a good basis for design.
“I don’t believe they will allow us to put up rents, however,” he told the CIBSE seminar. “EPCs are more likely to create stagnation in your property portfolio. People will not want to move into a G rated building and so you will get a groundswell of people not wanting to be in a building that is more expensive to run.”
Some of the quality problems are being caused by organisations who offer certificates at such low fees that it was difficult for professional engineers to compete, a number of delegates said. “The CLG needs to set benchmarks and kick some EPC providers out of the process,” said one delegate.
There are, in effect, two distinct markets: one for building owners who simply want to comply with the law so will get the certificate as cheaply as possible; and another for people who are interested in adding value to their built asset so will use the information provided on the certificate to make improvements.
M&E Sustainability learned that some EPCs were being offered for as little as £18 - and many are provided free by letting agents.
EPC and DEC provider John Field of Power Efficiency told the meeting there was no point in trying to deny the existence of the twin markets. “Owner occupiers view this process in different ways and we just have to ensure we provide them with information they want and can find useful.”
80,000 certificates
Another CLG official John Bryan told the meeting that over 80,000 commercial EPCs had been registered since October, which was “in line with what we expected”. He said the slowdown in the property market had had an effect, but the department was still pleased with how the system was being rolled out.
However, the conference heard that, in some areas, up to 40 per cent of small businesses were refusing to comply with the EPC requirement due to financial concerns. Many are prepared to risk prosecution because there was no evidence of the rules being enforced.
Mr Bryan added that a large number of certificates were being commissioned by property owners “at the last minute” before their buildings were to be let and this was putting pressure on the energy assessors and making it hard for them to gather all the data they needed.
Hammerson’s Paul Edwards condemned the requirement for empty buildings to have an EPC as “a complete waste of money” because it was impossible to establish likely energy usage patterns and owners would not be prepared to restrict their tenants’ power loads.
Mr Matthew added that CLG was about to commission a study of the quality assurance arrangements for the energy certification process and the “quality of the apparatus”. He said it was clear that there were some good accreditation schemes and some that were “not so good”, which would have to be brought up to scratch.
Headache
“The biggest headache, however, is the quality of the certificate itself,” he said. “There are a lot of different ways of assessing how good they are and we need to commission a piece of work that will look at a random sample to find out if they are being done properly and if the underpinning data is any good.”
The CLG will establish a common assessment scheme for everyone to use so it will obvious whether the certificate produced for a building is “a quality product or not”.
“We must get this right because the EPC regime has to be right at the heart of our future energy strategies, which will provide our approach right up to 2015,” added Mr Matthew. “We cannot afford to be forced into tweaking the system again in a few years time.”
There would be a need for a policing body and Mr Matthew hinted that this was most likely to be a new “arms length” organisation rather than CLG itself.
Ant Wilson of AECOM criticised the fact that the Government’s strategy for Sustainable Construction did not mention energy, but focused on carbon.
“We have a lot of policies that mess us up as engineers,” he said. “For example, we don’t know how they are going to produce our electricity next year so we cannot calculate its carbon content. As there is going to be less produced by nuclear it is getting ‘dirtier’ and we are working with carbon factors that are, effectively, changing all the time.
“The country needs to focus on energy reduction and not talk about carbon all the time,” said Mr Wilson.
He also pointed out that the domestic energy certificates do not look at energy, but at the cost of energy so they are weighted against electricity, which is more expensive – regardless of carbon content etc.
Occupied hours
“EPCs are all about CO2 emissions, but buildings with more people in them will use more energy. Anyone can design a C rated building, but if the occupier then puts 1,000 people in it when it was supposed to hold 500 that will dramatically change its energy performance.
“Therefore, to establish sustainability we have to look at occupied hours, which can make an F or G rated building more sustainable” said Mr Wilson.
Glenn Massey of Hoare Lea urged property owners to have a DEC done at the same time as their EPC as this was an extremely cost-effective approach and the savings identified by the DEC would easily pay for the additional expense.
“The opportunities to save energy in existing buildings are phenomenal,” he said. “There is less new build going on now anyway and building services professionals are best placed to make this legislation work.”