The Problem with EPCs

Depending on who you talk to there are various different statistics quoted around how much of the UK’s energy and consequently carbon emissions are caused by the built environment. The precise figure is not really important, what is important is that it is a great deal, certainly enough that people should care about how energy efficient buildings are. Unfortunately however people don’t, they just do not care. If people did care they would want to see an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) when they viewed property, they would want to know why it had achieved the rating it had, and what could be done to improve it, but that just doesn’t happen.

When people are buying, leasing or renting a building, they are interested in how much it will cost, where it is located, what it looks like, what the local amenities are like, what the terms of the lease are, what the rates and service charges are, when it will be available etc. Against these factors in their decision making the building’s energy performance comes a very poor second.

So if it is not seen as important by the people buying or renting the property it is also not important to the sellers and landlords that are required by law to have a valid certificate when a property is sold or leased. As a result obtaining an EPC is seen as a regulatory burden…. a cost….more government red tape. Understandably irritated by what they see as another useless piece of paper sellers and landlords source an EPC from the cheapest possible energy assessor they can lay their hands on.

Typically this energy assessor will not be an expert with years of knowledge under their belt. They will be someone who until recently was looking for a career change to the shiny new world of the “green” collar worker. The will have paid an extortionate price for a training course from a company telling them that there was a severe lack of assessors in the market and emerged bleary eyed after as little as 5 days actual training with their accreditation.

This energy assessor soon discovers that there are many people like them and too few buildings to go around and so in an effort to draw some income they lower their price to such an extent that they have to get through more and more assessments each week to make ends meet.

As a result quality suffers and certificates are produced from a set of default values to speed up the process, and the energy assessor who isn’t really in a position to provide sound advice based on the small amount of training they have received anyway will get way with it because the Landlord doesn’t really care what the certificate or accompanying report says, just that they have one.

Thus EPCs which could be used as a mechanism to dramatically reduce the energy use of our building stock will ultimately be devalued through price erosion, lack of knowledge on behalf of the Energy assessor and lack of interest on behalf of buyers and landlords to a useless piece of paper and a self fulfilling prophecy.

Until there is a reason for buyers and tenants to take a real interest in a buildings energy rating (linking the EPC rating to business rates and council tax payments has been discussed) EPCS will continue to be, to paraphrase Edmund Blackadder, like a broken pencil……pointless!