Between September to October, QualDeEPC has held its 3rd project meeting over the course of five sessions. Due to the covid-19 pandemic the meetings were held as virtual events but the consortium’s strong commitment to contribute to discussions and to collaborate was still tangible, setting the further steps for the successful realisation of the project:

“During its 3 years duration, the QualDeEPC project aims to increase the quality and cross-EU convergence of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) schemes, and to enhance the link between EPCs and deep renovation.”

In each session, QualDeEPC work package and subtask leaders gave an update on the current proceedings and an overview of the upcoming work until the beginning of the project’s second half in March 2021. However, during the five meetings, the central topic of discussion was the WP3 – “Development of enhanced EPC schemes” whose progress is explained here:

Session 1 – Development of enhanced EPC assessment, certification methods and processes: In the centre of the first session stood the potential improvements to the user-friendliness of the EPC forms and their status within the seven member states of the consortium. 12 potential enhancements, some of them existing features in partner countries, were discussed and half of them selected to be developed in more detail for an enhanced EPC. The outcome will be the basis for an English form of an enhanced EPC with highly user-friendly options to be introduced to experts during the second round of national QualDeEPC workshops in November and December this year.

Session 2 – Concept for Deep Renovation Network Platforms: The second session focused on the concept for the creation of the Deep Renovation Network Platforms, that will be integrated as a subchapter of the pending deliverable, the “Green paper on good practice in EPC assessment, certification, and use” to be published by the end of October 2020. The concept paper will clarify and set the necessary background information on services, target groups and other basic information agreed on by the project partners.

Session 3 – Improving EPC recommendations: The third session once again concentrated on the first subtask of the WP3, the development of enhanced EPC assessment, certification methods and processes. The recommendations provided by partners are individual since they are country specific. Accordingly, the consortium agreed on the development of a common definition of the term “Deep Renovation” while taking into consideration various elements, such as legal requirements for nZEB, energy-efficient components, lowest energy consumption possible as well as the question, how an economically feasible solution is to be defined.

Session 4 – Online tool for comparing EPC recommendations to deep energy renovation recommendations: In its penultimate session some groundwork on the third subtask of WP3 was conducted. To decide on the master version of the online tool for comparing EPC recommendations to deep energy renovation recommendations, further ideas were exchanged and contrasted. With the different preliminary work and conditions in the participating countries, more than one option for the realisation of the tool exists. These pathways will be discussed in further meetings between the partners that are involved as task leaders.

Session 5 – Renovation recommendations, EPC form template, training and advertisement guidelines: In the last session, the most pressing issue of WP3, the elements that are to be included in the enhanced EPC form, was discussed once again between partners. Another open point, the common definition of the term “Deep Renovation” was further developed between sessions and will be complemented with a joint list of building types and recommendation on deep renovation actions.

The brief sessions of the third partner meeting have proven to be very effective for the fast exchange and lively discussions. They contributed to the advancement of the WP3 results which are entwined with the further development of WP4 – “Testing the applicability through pilot cases” and WP5 – “Roadmap to convergence and action towards deep renovation”. Other important updates of the project progress include the finalisation of the WP4 “Summary report on standard EPC’s” by the end of October and the start of WP5. The latter is strongly interrelated with the core work packages 3 and 4 and will be the central gateway for further stakeholder communication of QualDeEPC.

Read more about the QualDeEPC project structure here.