Do you live in an A rated home?
On Wednesday DCLG announced details of the home energy certificates which must be in place due to EPBD (European Performance of Buildings Directive) by 2009. The UK version will be ready by next summer:
The certificates will give home buyers and sellers A to G ratings for their home’s energy efficiency and carbon emissions. They will tell them current average costs for heating, hot water and lighting in their home as well as how to cut costs with energy efficiency measures.
Commercial buildings will be following soon, but the implications on the domestic housing market could be enormous. All those poorly built, electrically heated flats built over the past 15 years could be facing a very sticky future. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the existing housing market. It’s all very well building new buildings correctly but we have a huge stock of existing housing which accounts for a much greater proportion of the carbon emissions. There was a fantastic report published in 2003 by BRE called ‘Domestic Energy Fact file 2003′ which has 103 pages of facts and figures.
In a no doubt related move, BRE have recently announced the launch of EcoHomes XB:
David Strong, MD of BRE Environment comments: ‘Reducing the environmental impact of the existing housing stock is a vitally important issue. BRE has worked closely with the Housing Corporation to develop EcoHomes XB - an environmental assessment tool for existing managed housing stock. We are delighted to have been able to assist the Housing Corporation by developing EcoHomes XB, a valuable addition to our family of environmental assessment tools.’
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