On February 3rd, 2022, the QualDeEPC project organised a roundtable with key European associations working in the field of Energy Performance of Buildings and Energy Certification. The participants could benefit from an exclusive first presentation of the QualDeEPC draft policy recommendations, which take into consideration the recent recast of the EPBD published by the European Commission on December 15th, 2021.
These recommendations aim at improving the Energy Performance Certificates, their design, content, and use across Europe. Targeting the 7 priorities of the project, QualDeEPC aims to include means, deadlines, and targets that could accelerate the renovation of the European building stock while ensuring a certain level of convergence of the EPC schemes across the EU. In general, the recommendations are drafted to contribute to 3 main objectives:
- Establish a close link between EPCs and deep energy renovation
- Improve the quality of EPC schemes
- Improve the cross-EU convergence of EPC schemes
Furthermore, some key issues that were discussed include:
- Merits, challenges and limitations of EPCs with calculated energy consumption and measured energy consumption
- The importance of providing building renovation passports for tenant occupied buildings
- The importance of building renovation passports, which describes the way and shows the potential for staged renovation, as the prime instrument for deep energy renovation
- How can recommendations on EPCs provide an alternative to renovation passports, when they are not available, for staged renovation
- Improved recommendations provided by QualDeEPC, which were well received
- Enhanced EPC template provided by QualDeEPC, which was well received; and in general, participants felt that the balance between technical complexity and affordability of the EPCs should maintained so that they remain reliable and yet cost-effective
Overall, the improvements on the seven priorities of EPCs and comprehensive policy proposals and draft policy recommendations of the QualDeEPC project were welcomed by the 29 participants and well taken.
The EU policy recommendations will be published in English and the national policy recommendations will be published in national languages as well as in English. All of them will be made available at the project website and partners‘ websites.