Stuart Johnson, director of FPDSavills Commercial and chair of the RICS Sustainability Working Group, outlines the provisions of the new EU directive.
About half of all carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings – about 30 per cent from our homes and 20 per cent from other buildings.
Following the 1997 Kyoto conference on climate change, the EU has issued a directive on the energy performance of buildings, obliging member states to have energy-saving measures in place by January 2006.
The directive (2002/91/EC) will be implemented through changes to Part L of the Building Regulations and other regulations, probably the European Communities Act 1972, covering new energy performance certificates. The revised Part L will, if implemented, require: improvements of 25 per cent on current energy efficiency standards; energy performance certificates to be issued to prospective purchasers and tenants; and energy efficiency improvements to be made to a building being extended or worked on. These measures must be in place by January 2006. Fuller information is set out in the Building Regulations section of the ODPM website.
To achieve the 25 per cent improvement in energy efficiency, Part L would set holistic or whole-building performance standards, rather than the existing elemental approach giving separate standards for building fabric and services components. For Building Regulations to new dwellings, it is proposed that Part L will refer to a dwelling carbon emissions rate based on the standard assessment procedure (SAP 2005). For non-domestic buildings, an emissions target of 25 per cent less than the current standard will be applied, after a calculation method based on comparison with a notional building of the same size and shape.
A new requirement is that work on existing buildings will trigger a need to make energy-efficient improvements to the building being extended, not just the extension.
Inevitably, the proposed changes to the Building Regulations will influence construction standards and the materials used. For instance, fully glazed office buildings are likely to become a thing of the past, with glazing used in more limited areas of the cladding, a point already made by architect Ken Shuttleworth, an ex-partner of Norman Foster. Already, at least one major central London developer is reviewing the cladding options for office schemes currently under design development, so it seems that a move away from the current crop of glass-robed offices towards larger areas of masonry and composite cladding is on the cards.
Energy performance certificates, paid for by the owner, will be necessary from January 2006 onwards. Independent experts will inspect boilers, air-conditioning systems, roofs, walls and windows and make recommendations for energy savings. For housing, they will apply both when an existing home is sold and for newly constructed stock, when they will require a pressure test to assess heat-loss. For non-domestic buildings, certificates will be necessary for large existing properties and all new properties. Certificates will have to be displayed prominently in large public buildings, and perhaps private buildings visited by large numbers of people.
Whether existing buildings demonstrating low levels of energy efficiency will become less desirable remains to be seen, but the directive will have a significant impact on the work of chartered surveyors. There will be a need for energy certifiers, valuations may be affected depending on a building’s energy use, and building surveyors will need to inspect energy certificates during due diligence work.
Key dates
- Consultation on proposed changes to Part L of the Building Regulations ended on 22 October 2004
- The revised Part L of the Building Regulations is due to be published in summer 2005, for implementation at the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006
- Certificates are to be made available from January 2006
- The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive comes into force in January 2006.
This article appeared in RICS Business, January 2005
