This EU directive 2002/91/EC aims to promote improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings.

As the Directive promotes energy savings it will help with meeting the Kyoto objectives.. Buildings consume 40% of energy in the EU and it is thought that this can be greatly reduced by implementing energy efficiency strategies Europe wide.

Download the Directive.

The Directive applies to both residential commercial and public buildings.

The main items are:

A common methodology for calculating the energy performance of all buildings. Minimum standards of energy performance for new buildings. Also applies to the renovation of existing buildings with a total surface area over 1000m². Energy certificates to be provided on all properties on change of occupancy Boilers and heating/cooling installations to be inspected and assessed.

Example Building Energy Certificate

The Directive became European law on 4th January 2003 and must be implemented within the UK from 4th January 2006 but an extension may be given if it can be shown that there is a lack of qualified individuals capable of producing these energy certificates, this extension may be up to 3 years.

This directive applies equally to all property groups:

New domestic properties
Rented- Public and Private
Commercial- retail, office, manufacturing
Public buildings- schools, hospitals, government offices, town halls, libraries etc..

The Building Regulations have required SAP ratings to be displayed in new properties since January 2001 but this piece of legislation has been wholly ignored due to lack of enforcement by building control. The Building Regualtions themselves will be updated probably in 2006 to be compliant with the EU Directive.

Home selling and purchasing

The EU Directive states that an energy performance certificate is produced for all properties at the time of sale. The Government has proposed the Home Information Pack as a means of delivering this requirement. The HIP will contain a number of different items one of which will be the Energy Performance Report. This report will contain specific recommendations to improve the energy performance of the property. (Read more about the Home Information Pack)

Domestic rented and non domestic properties.

Mechanisms for delivering energy certificates in these sectors are as yet unclear. While the domestic rented sector will be able to use the Reduced Data SAP methodology due to the complexity of the non domestic sector to produce a standardised methodology that would be applicable to all property types in this group is difficulty but such a standard is being currently developed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE).