Energy certificates for buildings

Article 7 of the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive 2002/91/EC requires that new buildings or existing buildings offered for sale or rental should have energy ratings produced using national calculation methodologies. In addition, Article 10 requires that those people producing the energy rating (and an accompanying certificate) should be competent and preferably accredited by a third party. There is a considerable body of underpinning knowledge and understanding required to make judge me nts between structural and building services options and to arrive at accurate values. It will be important to ensure a common knowledge base among those conducting energy ratings in order to achieve consistency and accuracy between building energy certifiers and across different types of built environ ment.

A number of issues have been identified by the ODPM Article 7/10 Advisory Group that need to be resolved before a sufficient number of experts can be trained to produce the certificates.

Issues to be resolved before energy certificates can be produced

A number of issues have been identified that need to be resolved before a sufficient number of experts can be trained to produce the certificates.

• National Calculation Methodologies must be finalised
• Suitable training schemes and qualifications must be developed
• A competent persons scheme with suitable quality assurance must be set up
• The insurance industry must be consulted to ensure that people doing the energy ratings have adequate professional indemnity insurance
• The timetable for implementation of Directive by Jan 2006 is very tight. There will need to be specific training for already skilled practitioners for first phase of certificates
• Resources are required to develop necessary Technical Standards and qualifications.

It is currently thought that two National Calculation Methodologies will used: one for dwellings and one for other buildings.

For dwellings, a reduced version of the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is being developed.

For other buildings, a National Calculation methodology is being developed by the BestCert programme and is described in the Part L (2005) consultation document. However, this programme does not have sufficient funding to populate the methodology with all the default values that it will need to be able to calculate energy ratings for all building types.

Training and qualifications

The skills required to conduct energy ratings and to produce certificates containing energy efficiency recommendations will need to be defined by a group of experts. It is thought that the skills will include aspects of surveying, architecture, building services and energy efficiency knowledge.

Modules of training will then need to be developed which take into account the calculation method and building type (dwelling or non-dwelling, building complexity).

National Occupational Standards will need to be developed and from these Vocationally Related Qualification (VRQ) or National or Scottish Vocational Qualification (N/SVQ) training schemes will be developed by course providers.

Competent persons schemes / Quality Assurance

A scheme (licensed by ODPM) that can provide quality assurance via third-party certification will need to be set up.

Five areas of competence have been identified in which any person could be recognized as competent. These are: design ratings (new-build) and asset ratings (existing buildings) for dwellings and other buildings; operational rating for public buildings.

Multiple quality assurance schemes working to the same Technical Standard should be encouraged to be commercial and competitive. Eventually, these schemes should incorporate UKAS accreditation.

To ensure quality, the Technical Standard should require that a random sample of completed certificates are checked for accuracy.

The domestic scheme must be compatible with Home Information Pack and Building Control requirements so as not to duplicate effort.

Competent Persons Schemes shall be required to submit all results to a common database repository.