Overview of existing surveys on energy performance related quality and compliance. QUALICHeCK Report: "Status on the Ground"

Report, 2015

This report is part of a series of reports to be produced in the context of the IEE QUALICHeCK project. The primary objective of this report is to gather preliminary information on quality and compliance issues in 9 focus countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Sweden) on the 4 technology areas specifically addressed in the project (transmission characteristics, ventilation and airtightness, sustainable summer comfort technologies, and renewables in multi-energy systems). It is not meant to accurately and exhaustively describe the status of quality and compliance in those countries for those technology areas. This report also includes some information from countries outside the consortium, in particular from the United Kingdom.

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive recast (EPBD recast) gives ambitious goals for the building sector to reduce energy use as well as greenhouse gas emissions. It requires Member States to engage in the generalisation of Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEB), both for new and existing buildings. Although experience has shown that such buildings can be realised in practice, there exist many challenges to drive the whole market in this direction. One specific challenge concerns the compliance of buildings to NZEB requirements, in particular how to ensure they actually comply with applicable regulations or programme specifications. Another challenge lies in upgrading the quality of the works to meet NZEB standards at commissioning but also on the longer term.

The IEE QUALICHeCK project addresses these two issues with two main objectives: To set up a series of actions which should result in more attention and practical initiatives for:
1. Actual compliance with the claimed energy performance for new and renovated buildings, i.e., ‘boundary conditions which force people to do what they declare’;
2. Achieving a better quality of the works, i.e., ‘boundary conditions which stimulate and allow the building sector to deliver good quality of the works’.

Chapter 2 of this report describes the overall situation in the 9 focus countries, with specific attention to the status on the quality of input data, the quality of the works and the effectiveness of compliance frameworks. Chapter 3 gives examples of observed performance in daily practice grouped according to the 4 focus technology areas. Chapter 4 briefly presents some examples of interesting schemes, whether already implemented or under development.

Several studies and expert-statements highlight critical issues on the input data used in Energy Performance Certificates (EPC). This seems to arise, at least to a significant extent, from the absence of verification after the works are finished. Compliance frameworks are typically limited to verifications at building permit stage, therefore, not with "as-built" data. Most countries do not have control mechanisms at later stages, including design changes during construction, commissioning, final design/production information, and operation. Therefore, errors due to design modifications compared to the initial EPC submission or poor workmanship (affecting the EPC input data) seem common. In addition, EPC calculations are checked by authorities with very small and seldom random samples. To overcome this problem, several countries or regions (AU (in Salzburg region), BE, FR) have recently introduced interesting schemes to check the consistency of the input data after completion of the works.

Other problems identified on the EPC input data include:
- unclear procedures;
- uneasy access to the EPC input data;
- mistakes or fraud by persons providing the input data;
- lack of competence of persons providing the input data.

Chapter 3 summarises 31 specific studies addressing specific concerns on performance data from the field, the compliance of the input data, the quality of the works, or the compliance frameworks. Although the situation is contrasted between countries and technologies, this partial information confirms the need to further work on schemes to improve the confidence in the compliance of input values and in the quality of the works. As illustration with regard to transmission characteristics, a Belgian field study conducted in the late 90s on 200 dwellings has shown significant discrepancies between reported and actual insulation levels, with little impact on the requirements supposed to be met. A Swedish study has highlighted challenges for the determination of thermal bridges with an appropriate trade-off between simplicity and accuracy. Regarding ventilation and airtightness, several studies have shown significant deviations 2 Overview of existing surveys on energy performance related quality and compliance between expected and actual performance (as per EPC rules) and suggest major sources of problems in the design and the quality of the works. There are also interesting examples regarding renewables, e.g., on domestic hot water solar thermal installations in France with, on the one hand, a field campaign on 9 large installations showing an even distribution of very good to very poor results; on the other hand, very good results on 11.817 installations in individual houses audited under a specific certification programme. This chapter also shows the difficulty to define compliance criteria for summer thermal comfort criteria, based on an Estonian field study on 28 apartments buildings, as 65% of the apartments monitored did not comply with the present requirement (less than 150 degree-hours below 27 °C).

In all EU countries, national procedures exist to support the mandatory availability of EPCs for new and renovated buildings. Chapter 4 describes approaches developed or under development to (or potentially interesting to) increase confidence in the compliance of the EPC input data and the quality of the works, and to ease the access to EPC input data. Some approaches are also briefly mentioned in Chapters 2 & 3.

The approaches mentioned or briefly described in this report to increase the confidence the EPC input
data include:
- standard format for documenting the input data and reporting the results of the energy calculations, in order to make the EPC input data and the results documentation transparent (Estonia);
- automatic checks in the calculation software and/or during upload into the EPC database (Austria, Belgium) ;
- product data databases to help ensure that correct product data is used (e.g., in Belgium and France);
- catalogues of construction methods (e.g. thermal bridges catalogues).

As for the quality of the works, the approaches include:
- voluntary building certification schemes that require measurements and tests (e.g., in Austria and Spain);
- voluntary certification schemes for construction workers and/or companies (e.g., in Belgium, France, or Romania);
- mandatory inspection of the building service systems (e.g., in Cyprus, or Sweden).

Overall, although this report does not pretend to give an accurate picture of the quality and compliance status in the 9 focus countries for the 4 technology areas of interest, it suggests that the awareness on those issues, as well as on the measures taken to overcome them range very widely, from little or no field knowledge to in-depth analysis, and from naïve to fairly elaborated schemes. Some very interesting approaches should be analysed in more detail in later phases of the QUALICHeCK project. This report also confirms the need to tackle quality and compliance issues for successful EPBD implementation, both in terms of awareness raising, as well as development of appropriate tools and schemes to increase confidence in the effectiveness of the implementation of the EPBD.