Energy Efficient Buildings: Next Generation Energy Performance Certificates

Minimum Energy Performance Standards in Buildings on the Ground
                           Julien Dijol, Policy Director, Housing Europe

"What is true in one segment of the housing market, may not be true in another."

Julien Dijol is Head of Policy  and Deputy Secretary-General at Housing Europe. Julien is a social and political scientist by education and has been trained at the Institute of political studies (IEP) in Bordeaux (France), the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium).

Julien presented the impact of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) in different European countries such as France, the Netherlands and Germany at the CrossCert event "Energy Efficient Buildings: Next Generation Energy Performance Certificates". He emphasized their importance for policy making and pointed out that legislation on energy standards relies on meaningful calculation methods to produce these certificates. He pointed out problems when it comes to differences in methodology between Member States and the importance of standardizing next generation EPCs. 

We invited Julien to talk about the concrete impacts of Minimum Energy Performance Standards for Buildings especially from the perspective of social housing.

How to Make Next-Gen EPCs Meaningful for Consumers
                           Guillaume Joly, Senior Sustainable Buildings Officer BEUC

“You need to provide guidelines to people regarding the right investment in insulation!”

Guillaume Joly joined BEUC – the European Consumer Organisation’s Energy Team as the Sustainable Building officer. Trained as an urbanist and as a public policy designer, he formerly worked for several local Authorities in France (Région Ile-de-France, Métropole Européenne de Lille) as well as for C40, a worldwide network of global Cities engaged in energy transition and tackling climate change. His core expertise is on private residential energy retrofit and he is actually working on the Fit-for-55 package revision of Energy Directives. His vision is that consumers, as decision-makers of the energy retrofit projects, are the key stakeholders of the Renovation Wave. They need reliable information on the energy performance of the properties they own or intend to buy. Energy Performance Certificates are the key tool to achieve this. EPCs need to become more reliable, simpler to read, with clear information on the next steps to take to future-proof their homes.

Guillaume presented the consumer's perspective on Energy Performance Certificates.

Panel Discussion: The Role of Next-Gen EPCs in Energy-efficient Building Renovation: Challenges and Solutions

 In this panel discussion, experts of the NEXT-Gen EPC Cluster, a group of Horizon and Interreg projects working on next-generation EPCs, discussed how these certificates can be improved and made more attractive and usable for consumers.