How can we make EPCs better, government asks industry

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Government is planning to reform Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) in a bid to make them more effective drivers of energy efficiency investment.

It seeks industry views on how well the current EPC system is working and how it could be improved across both domestic and non-domestic sectors.

The department for business, energy and industrial strategy (Beis) is looking for views across the whole process for gathering, generating, storing, using and making available the information found on an EPC.

The call for evidence outlines the government’s intention to improve the quality and consistency of EPC data and make it more widely available to third parties.

To do that, the document outlines Beis’ ideas around the core elements of a ‘good’ EPC and asks whether it has the right criteria.

Reliability and ‘gaming’

Beis wants to know how reliable and accurate current EPCs are, given evidence suggests ratings can vary significantly for the same property when carried out by different assessors.

The call also seeks ideas on how to stop people trying to cheat the system, which some people may have done to ensure they can receive higher subsidies for solar generation, for example, which require a minimum energy performance rating.

Data and tech

Beis also wants ideas on how it might combine new data sources – such as smart meter data with temperature sensors and data analytics to inform key aspects of the EPC, such as the building heat transfer coefficient. However, the department admits it does not have a clear understanding of how such products work, how reliable they are and therefore whether they are suitable to be used to factor into EPCs.

Frequency and trigger points

Beis is also keen to hear views around when new trigger points could be introduced to require an EPC to be updated. If they have to be issued more frequently, people have to become more familiar with them, and therefore may start to engage and act, the department suggests.

See the call for evidence here.

Responses are required by 19 October.

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