A Data-Driven Energy Platform: From Energy Performance Certificates to Human-Readable Knowledge through Dynamic High-Resolution Geospatial Maps

Improving energy efficiency in buildings is a major priority of industrialized countries. By eliminating market asymmetries, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) is a potential policy instrument when it comes to promoting energy efficiency of real estate. Real estate agents have an important role in providing information about dwellings for sale on the market. The aim of this paper is to study whether the introduction of EPCs changes the asking price setting of real estate agents. We take advantage of the fact that the introduction of a mandatory energy certification system represents a quasi-natural experiment, where we have data on house price and asking price. Based on the analysis, both of a hedonic model and a fixed effect model, we provide evidence that the implementation of EPCs did not affect the price setting of real estate agents. This indicates that real estate agents either disregard EPCs as providers of new information or believe that the market is indifferent to this kind of information. Our results also indicate that there are large similarities between the effects of energy labels on the asking prices and the transaction prices.

The impact of energy performance certificates: A survey of German home owners

Effects of energy performance certificates on investment: A quasi-natural experiment approach

The European Commission (EC) has established climate neutrality by 2050 as one of its objectives. To achieve this, decarbonising the building stock is crucial since buildings are responsible for 36% of European greenhouse gas emissions. Monitoring the progress of decarbonisation is crucial to understand where we stand in terms of achieving long-term decarbonisation goals, facilitate evidence-based decision-making, promote accountability among member states (MS), and engage the public in these initiatives. However, data collection for monitoring the decarbonisation of buildings represents a challenge for MS, for which they may not be adequately prepared.To promote the collection and publication of open data, the EC has established frameworks for developing open data infrastructures within MS through various directives, offering comprehensive and well-organized information. Directives such as the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE), which advocates for the collection and accessibility of data in diverse topics, and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), enabling the analysis of extensive information on the energy efficiency of constructed assets through the open publication of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) databases, exemplify these efforts. However, this information often remains dispersed and narrowly focused, necessitating the integration of other data sources to extract meaningful insights.The paper delves into the benefits of georeferencing and automated cross-referencing of open data on buildings, enabling the monitoring of decarbonisation progress. To achieve this, we have developed a national-scale Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) for Spain. This model is founded on EPCs and other open data derived from public information sources established through European directives. Additionally, we have investigated the prospect of integrating data from Digital Building Logbooks (DBL), which are emerging data repositories on buildings promoted by the EC in the forthcoming EPBD, into the UBEM to enhance the model.The study showcases significant potential in developing information on various topics, including characterising the Spanish building stock — a framework that may be extrapolated to other MS — in terms of energy performance based on location, archetype, and age. The study also focuses on estimating energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, monitoring the progress of renovations, evaluating the achieved energy savings, and identifying and characterising the least energy-efficient segments of the building stock.

Throughout the developed world, residential buildings in the rental sector exhibit lower levels of energy efficiency than the owner-occupied building stock. This study estimates Irish rental tenants’ willingness-to-pay for energy efficiency improvements. A double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method is used to examine how much renters are willing to pay in their monthly rent for improved energy efficiency, measured via energy performance certificates. Using an administrative dataset from a grant scheme for residential energy efficiency retrofits, we examine the upfront cost to landlords of engaging in energy efficiency retrofits and calculate associated payback periods. Tenants in Ireland are willing to pay an average of €38 for a one-grade improvement along a 15-point energy performance certificate scale. Providing additional information about energy performance certificates and the potential impact on energy costs reduced mean willingness-to-pay, implying that in the absence of information tenants overvalued energy efficiency labels. Based on tenants’ willingness-to-pay, investment payback periods for attic and cavity wall insulation are relatively short but prohibitively long for external wall insulation and solar heating retrofits.

Check-in and Control Activities on the Energy Performance Certificates in Emilia-Romagna (Italy)

PurposeThis article seeks to investigate the interconnections between the expectations of the impact of energy certificates issued within the UK domestic building sector through the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and the actual number and financial implications of the energy saving measures (ESMs) achieved.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology uses two previously published surveys and compares these with a third independent survey by the authors focusing upon the discrepancies between planned action and implemented action, introducing the term human factor element (hfe).FindingsThe article concludes that annual carbon savings arising from implementation of the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) may be as low as 73.4 ktC over the five year term of the Kyoto Protocol even though 44 per cent of energy saving measure costs of £200 million are recouped within the same time period and savings will continue for up to 40 years. Achieving annual savings of only 14.7 ktC by 2010, such a figure represents a mere 0.3 per cent of the annual domestic 4.8 MtC savings announced by the government in its 2006 Climate Change Programme.Practical implicationsSince the principal determinant in the uptake of ESMs is initial cost, it is considered that the EPBD is likely to remain an under‐performing instrument in the promotion of energy sufficiency until such time as other complementary provisions are introduced.Originality/valueSheds light upon the likely financial impact upon energy efficiency in domestic buildings by energy certificates.

The market value of physical assets varies over time as a function of different factors. These factors are related, for instance, to the correct execution of construction works and installation of systems, the procedures for the operation of systems and equipment, the continuous implementation of maintenance operations and to the location and the perceived value. However, there is no clear evidence, in Italy, of how buildings’ market value is affected by the energy performance measured by the Energy Performance Certification (EPC), promoted thanks to the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in order to drive the assets’ energy efficiency. The aim of the research is the definition of a methodology for the identification of the impact of the energy performance on the market value of the assets. An analysis of the market values of assets has been carried out based on a public database. On this basis, an investigation of homogeneous assets’ price areas has been performed. The results have been geolocated and further processed, which allowed to associate differences in the market values to the energy performance retrieved from the Certificazione Energetica degli EDifici (CENED) database (the Italian regional EPC database). The buildings included in the analysis are residential buildings distributed in the regional territory (Lombardy Region). The methodology has been tested at national level but is potentially scalable in different contexts. It has been developed and applied in two case studies, cities with different size and characteristics located in the northern Italy.

An analysis of errors in the Energy Performance certificate database

The related problems of improving existing buildings' energy performance, reducing energy consumption, and improving indoor comfort and their many consequences are well known. Considering increasing urbanization and climate change, governments define strategies to enhance and measure buildings' energy performance and energy efficiency. This work aims to contribute to the improvement of buildings' characteristics by conducting a thorough systematic literature review and adopting a data science approach to these problems, presenting initial results with an open-access energy performance certificate dataset from the Lombardy Region, in Italy. We provide a pre-processing method to the data, applicable for future research, aiming to address challenges such as automatic classification of existing buildings' energy performance certification, and predicting energy-efficient retrofit measures, using machine learning techniques. The analysis of this dataset is challenging because of the high variability and dimensionality of this dataset. For this purpose, a robust iterative process was developed. First, the data dimensionality was reduced with Pearson Correlation to find the best set of variables against the non-renewable global energy performance index (EPgl, nren). Then, the outliers were handled by utilizing Box Plot and Isolation Forest algorithms. The main contribution is to inform private and public building sectors on dealing with high dimensional data to achieve enhanced energy performance and predict energy-efficient retrofit measures to improve their energy performance.

BackgroundParticulate matter emissions from residential wood burning are rising in many countries. Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter is strongly linked with adverse health effects including cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Policymakers and scientists need accurate tools to identify residential wood burning hotspots. However, current methods rely on spatially-misaligned, out-of-date data sources, reducing their practical utility and portability to other contexts. Furthermore, the socio-economic characteristics of residential wood burning in high income countries are poorly understood.MethodsWe used open data from 26 million Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for properties in England and Wales from 2009–2025 to map the concentration and prevalence of wood burners within small areas. We evaluated our method against the UK national wood burning emissions inventory using national air pollution monitoring networks. We used novel open data linkages to characterise associations between area-level prevalence of wood burners and socio-economic factors including deprivation, ethnicity, and age.FindingsWe identified substantial spatial heterogeneity in the concentration of wood burners, with the highest concentrations in affluent urban areas. Our concentration metric was more strongly correlated with peaks in winter PM2.5 at urban monitoring sites than estimates from the UK national emissions inventory. Prevalence of wood burners was positively correlated with age and negatively correlated with measures of social deprivation. Prevalence of wood burners in EPCs has increased since 2009.ConclusionsEPCs are a valuable data source which policymakers can use to target local interventions or extend existing restrictions on solid fuel burning. Our method is transparent, up-to-date, and portable to other countries where similar EPC data is available. The relationship between social deprivation and prevalence of wood burning heat sources highlights important issues of environmental justice. Epidemiological analyses of wood smoke exposures and health should carefully account for the confounding effects of age, deprivation, and ethnicity.

Building codes currently regulate energy efficiency in newly constructed buildings in Sweden. Alongside energy declarations, performance-based regulation specifying specific energy use requirements was introduced in Sweden in 2006. The requirements have been subsequently tightened to enhance energy performance. This study estimates the impact of these requirements on energy savings in Swedish multi-apartment buildings, relying on specific energy use data from energy performance certificates (EPCs). An estimated time trend indicates greater energy efficiency at a rate of 1.57% per year for buildings with district heating and 1.09% per year for electrically heated buildings. After accounting for this trend, the results indicate that the implementation of performance-based regulation is associated with a 14.2% increase in energy efficiency for buildings with district heating and a 9.7% increase for those with electric heating. Moreover, the first tightened building codes generates an additional 2% increases in energy efficiency for district-heated buildings and an approximately 7.4% improvement for electrically heated buildings. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the second tightening of building codes have strong effects on further increasing energy efficiency. Furthermore, the effect of building codes is more substantial for buildings where actual energy use exceeds the mandated levels and modest for buildings with better energy performance. Alternatively, when studying the time trend of energy efficiency, I find a structural break with a significantly greater increase in efficiency over time during the period of regulation compared to before. In addition, findings in this study indicate evidence of the energy performance gap, where the estimated energy use from engineering models is substantially lower than the measured energy use for comparable construction.

Energy efficiency in the German residential housing market: Its influence on tenants and owners

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the relationship between energy performance and property sale price in the Belfast housing market. How energy efficiency is contributes to sale price and thus appraisal value is of growing concern. The obligatory measurement of energy efficiency in private dwellings seeks to encourage improvements in energy performance. This may be capitalised into property value and may stimulate demand for energy-efficient buildings. However, the relationship between energy performance and property value remains nebulous, complex and under-researched – in part due to data limitations. Design/methodology/approach – Using a hedonic pricing specification, this paper measures the effect of energy performance certificates (EPCs) on residential property value. It examines the relationship between 3,797 residential sales transactions across the Belfast housing market, showing the percentage effect on property value with respect to energy performance. Findings – The results indicate a small but positive relationship between better energy performance and higher selling prices. Nonetheless, the findings point towards strong preference, demand tastes and a complex intra-relationship between EPCs and their capitalisation into property value. Pertinently, the findings point towards any energy-efficient-related price effect affect to be marginal alongside more “quality”-based market behaviours. Research limitations/implications – Analogous with other studies, data deficiencies and a lack of incorporating price determining variables (missing determinants) such as heating type and glazing type introduces omitted variable bias and endogeneity problems within the model structure. Originality/value – This paper contributes to emerging literature and policy debate surrounding the measurement and implementation of energy-efficiency certification through a greater understanding of energy performance characteristics in determining property value.

Although the significance of sustainable municipal energy management has not yet been widely recognized in Ukraine, important steps to popularize this idea among local authorities have been taken through the introduction of the Display® campaign in 11 Ukrainian municipalities. This European voluntary energy and environmental performance certification system of buildings aims to encourage local authorities to publicly demonstrate the energy and environmental performance of their buildings and to thereby convince citizens to stop wasting energy and water. This paper analyzes to what extent the campaign has been valuable for sustainable energy management in those Ukrainian cities that have set an example of an active bottom-up approach to enhancing the integration of a former Soviet Union country in the European Union on account of their support of the associations Energy Cities and “Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine”, as well as their own endeavors to implement EU climate protection policy.