What's an Energy Performance Certificate?

David Altabev of Fulcrum Consulting speaks to Estates Review about the burning issue of EPCs

Recently Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) were finally ushered in to an industry largely unprepared to respond to this far-reaching legislation. A legislative requirement for all buildings over 10,000sq metres, they will be phased in over the next six months to eventually cover every non-domestic building.

EPCs rate the building in terms of its potential energy performance at the design stage, allowing, for the first time, prospective investors to bring energy performance of their building stock into the investment and business decision-making process. Further, the certificates are seen as an opportunity to drive industry improvement in the design of energy efficient buildings that protect occupants from rising global energy prices. They will also go some way to contributing to the UK’s CO2 emissions reduction targets, with buildings accounting for 45 percent of the UK’s energy footprint.

In theory, they should be simple to obtain. In practice they aren’t.

Whilst the general consensus is that mandatory certification is needed in an industry slow to change, there have been several significant stumbling blocks that are still to be resolved despite the 6th April curtain already passing. So great are these obstacles that the government finally yielded, and provided some breathing space allowing properties already on the market before 6th April a six month window in which to obtain certification. Whether this will solve the problem or simply delay it is unclear.

Central to the backtrack – as had been expected by industry – was that there simply wouldn’t be enough assessors available to certify all the buildings. The CLG estimate of 200,000 certificates being required in 2008 implies a lot of assessors would be required, and you would have expected training to commence some time ago – not in February. CIBSE say they have 100 assessors already trained with another 300 on the way by July. Saying these assessors will be busy is an understatement.

Becoming an energy assessor is not easy, and will be limited to those with significant professional and design experience. The certificates should be carried out by competent persons and a robust training and quality assurance scheme is to be welcomed. However, it is questionable as to whether the requirements are too stringent as to reduce the pool of potential assessors. By ensuring only highly experienced people can make the assessor grade, it raises the question, will these people be interested in doing certifications day in, day out? Unless the role is intrinsically linked into the design process, the task of certification becomes a relatively mundane task. Engineers do what they do because they want to design, to engineer, not assess.

What this amounts to is a potential market bottleneck where buildings can’t obtain building control sign-off, be sold or rented because the owners can’t obtain a certificate. And with all this confusion, many people simply overwhelmed by conflicting information and problems are unprepared for their implementation.

So, once the process is fully up-to-speed, how is the market likely to respond, and how will this affect the design process and the role of the building design engineer?

It is intended that the certificates will break the construction industry’s inherent ‘cycle of blame’ against providing energy efficient buildings by incentivising demand.

For existing buildings, there is likely to be a large focus on improving energy efficiency through more effective building management. The role of the facilities managers and dedicated energy managers looks likely to expand, and the idea of ‘building performance’ is likely to reach beyond focusing primarily on user comfort to encompass energy efficiency, O&M Manuals and maintaining or improving certificate ratings. Minor improvements in the building services and metering strategies are likely to be the first step for most people, in part, to ensure that accurate measurements of energy consumption can be taken. This is likely to be accompanied with closer attention being paid to the optimised operation of services.

For new buildings, energy efficient design and building services may receive a much higher focus as developers wish to achieve a high rating to secure higher rental yields and return on investment. With the operation of the building forming a greater part of the business case for development, there may be a shift towards whole-life-costing models to capture this value and risk. The market for post-completion continuous performance management is also set to grow in importance and value as property owners seek to maximise building returns across their lifetime.

The emergence of a two-tier rental market where more energy efficient properties, i.e. those in the A-B bands, may command higher rents. Part L compliance is roughly equivalent to a B/C rating. Therefore for new buildings within the top tiers (A-B) it will be difficult to differentiate between energy efficient and standard building regulations compliant buildings, there may not be the drive for energy efficient buildings that otherwise might have been expected. Also, current Part L 2006 compliance calculations do not recognise the full potential of innovative energy efficient design methods (such as Termodeck) and are not capable of incorporating the energy savings from these systems into their calculations and resultant energy ratings, therefore risking acting as a disincentive to CO2 reduction innovations.

So where does this leave the building design engineer? Indications are that band specific ratings will become a design driver, and form part of the contract between client and engineer. In time, Local Authority policies may require a specific rating in the same way that BREEAM has been adopted. Clearly, engineers who pursue low energy building design as a matter of course will be in a better position to design a building to achieve an A/B rating, however, guaranteeing a particular rating is a different matter that requires an in-depth understanding and experience of the EPC methodology that can only come with time.

It is too early to judge the time and costs to produce EPCs, however, early indications are that CLG’s estimations were too low. The extensive qualifications required to be an assessor are a high value commodity in today’s market that will ultimately impact on the cost of EPCs.

What is clear is that until these teething problems are resolved, and the wider industry gains experience in commissioning and producing certificates, the engineers designing and delivering buildings to meet EPC band ratings and their certificates are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Without all the information, advising clients on complex projects is difficult, and committing to guaranteeing a specific rating a risk that many will be keen to avoid.

EPCs are a great potential opportunity to improve the existing building stock and the design of new buildings but we need to ensure that unresolved issues are clarified as soon as possible if the industry is to fully embrace this opportunity.
 
For further Information please see www.fulcrumfirst.com
david.altabev@fulcrumfirst.com
020 7520 1300
Download Fulcrum's 'Energy Certification for Non-Domestic Buildings' briefing note from www.fulcrumfirst.com