EPC Plus Service

From April 2018, the proposed legislative changes make it unlawful to let residential or commercial properties with an EPC Rating of F or G (i.e. the lowest two tiers/grades of energy efficiency). Given this risk to property owners and occupiers it is clear that a full understanding of the energy efficiency of your property assets should be attained. Owners will need to assess the costs and viability of undertaking retrofits or refurbishments.

This will have a serious impact on value and make finding a cost effective solution imperative.

The Government believes that the “Green Deal” may provide a financial solution to support energy efficiency refurbishment and retro-fit projects. However, although we are also qualified Commercial Green Deal Assessors we believe a cost effective and more practical approach is to analyse your Energy Performance Certificate in detail to reduce any costly Green Deal surveys (although the Green Deal does allow for the improvement measures to be carried out without full payment in advance) or refurbishments in order to bring the property in-line at a minimum cost.

Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) and our EPC Plus service

The energy efficiency of your property or Asset Rating is derived by comparing your building to a similar notional building with an added improvement factor based on current Building Regulations. As Building Regulations become more demanding (including software changes) so too will your Asset Rating become lower (i.e. worse) however this is not the only reason. Under the approaching 2018 Energy Act it will make properties illegal for rentals if they do not achieve the minimum rating (Minimum Energy Performance Standards). Now is the time to start improving your Asset Rating and in turn save money.

This is where we come in……

We provide ‘what if’ scenarios (our EPC Plus service) and remodel the properties using 3D simulations enabling us to identify the most cost effective solution to improve the energy efficiency (hence EPC rating) of our clients’ buildings/portfolios. It will show exactly what is required to achieve the best rating for your building before any fabric, heating, cooling, lighting etc. changes are physically undertaken.

The 3D simulation model for the building will be based on information gathered from the EPC survey (ranging from building fabric, HVAC, lighting, controls etc). We can then perform a multitude of energy simulations (the ‘what if’ scenarios) of the property which will give a real sense of how big the opportunities for improvement might be, while at the same time enabling you to clearly focus on the low-hanging fruit of energy inefficiencies.

Although a full site survey is required (in the same way as an EPC assessment), if an EPC already exists it is possible (depending on the software used by the original assessor) for us to run these 'what if' scenarios/simulations on other assessors’ EPCs. However we try to avoid this where possible since in our experience (formerly as Auditors on behalf of BRE) we find too many properties which have either an inaccurate EPC due to lack of experience on the part of the assessor or too many ‘defaults’ that have been used in their production.