A Chance to Change the Energy Efficiency Landscape

by Nicholas Doyle, Places for People - 17th Mar 06

Is everyone getting excited about the new European Directive on Energy Performance in Buildings? Well you should be, but not for the reasons you think. The Directive, or EPBD to its friends, will require homes, every time they are let or sold, to have an energy rating certificate that also lists cost effective improvements. 

This is good news. This will give us better informed, more energy literate consumers. But the real reason we should be jumping up and down is because the Directive's implementation will actually lead to a decrease in energy efficiency. 

Why? Because rather than developing certificates that are easily understood by consumers we have been given RDSAP - a version of SAP that risks being too complicated for surveyors to get anywhere near accurate. It is also too complicated for consumers, so it has to be converted into the banding of A- G we recognise on white goods.

The certificate though, is not the straight forward one side A4 we get on fridges that has real visual impact, but 4 pages long. Consumers will not be able to see the wood for the trees. Oh and energy price changes instantly makes much of the data inaccurate.  Lucky we don't have any of those then.

So we have a certificate that is too complicated to be accurate and simply won't encourage consumers to take action and is out of date almost the moment it is written. But more importantly this is not cheap to produce. A conservative estimate is that each assessment is going to cost between £75 and £200 each. In affordable rented housing alone this will, even if we take a generous average cost per assessment, be £22m per year.

That's £22m not being spent on energy efficiency. That is an awful lot of measures each year.  To put this into context that is more than twice the annual spend on the clear skies and DTI major PV program for the last 3 years - and remember how excited we all got about that.

This could so easily be avoided. In discussions with both DEFRA and ODPM it has been proposed to produce certificates for every single affordable rented house in England not just those being sold or rented. Imagine that - every affordable home having an energy certificate. And we can do this if we are given some more time and have an assessment process that can be easily completed as part of stock condition surveys.

With the introduction of the Directive we are being gifted one of the greatest opportunities ever given us to change the entire energy efficiency landscape.  What are we trying to do here - get people to improve their homes and actually reduce carbon emissions or create fancy certificates that make techies purr but leave the rest of us cold? We may be too late but I believe we are not only looking this gift horse in the mouth, but are in serious risk of flogging it to death.

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Responses

David Morgan, Hartlepool Borough Council - 30th June 06

I couldn't agree more and have expressed similar opinions during the consultation.  If the document does not grab the attention in the first few seconds, and in my opinion it will fail miserably, the recipient is unlikely to take any action.  At four pages long it is unlikely that any but the most ardent environmentalist is going to read it right through.  The reference to a gift horse was most appropriate as it reminded me of asking a committee to design a horse and ending up with a camel.

The problems associated with a 4 page certificate become even stronger when you consider that this has to be made available not just when a property is sold but every time the property is rented out.

Elizabeth Brogan, National Landlords Association - 10th August 06

The certificate will contain the rating bands which will interest the tenant but the detailed recommendations in the certificate will only be of interest to the landlord who will be responsible for installing any measures.  No tenant is going to want to wade through 4 pages of a certificate.  It must surely be possible to create a shortened version for rentals?

Andy Frew , Thermacad Energy Consultancy - 11th Aug 06

Tenants and buyers stand to gain greatly from energy rating certificates.  Buyers can judge if their home will be expensive to heat, and what investment will be needed to make it comfortable.  Social housing tenants can tell if their landlords are 'Ignoring Energy Efficiency, as outlined by William Gillis of National Energy Action(14 July 2006).  Private renters can judge if the energy efficiency of their home matches their income and lifestyle.

Certificates need headline indicators such as SAP and the A-G scale, but they also need detail and recommendations to create the prospect that homes may be improved, and to educate owners and occupiers.  Without the detail there is less opportunity for owners to make cost effective investments.

Detailed Energy Certificates empower people.  They will reward property owners who invest prudently over time, and create competitive markets for improvements.  There is a cost for achieving accuracy, but once a quality standard has been set and policed, prices will become more cost-reflective, approaching those of an additional hour and a half's work by a surveyor.

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