EPC rating variance makes consistent and meaningful evaluations and comparisons difficult to achieve

EPC rating variance makes consistent and meaningful evaluations and comparisons difficult to achieve, writes Kiran Patel, global CIO and deputy CEO at Savills Investment Management.

EPCs are created through modelling, predicting energy use, rather than using measured energy use. The EPC calculations use standardised assumptions about occupancy, heating patterns and geographical location. This allows EPCs for the same building type to be compared. In other words, EPC provides an energy-efficiency rating for the property itself, rather than an in-use rating.

Statistics from Europe show that there is often a gap between predicted and actual energy use in buildings. This is known as the “performance gap”. An EU-funded project called Build2Perform, analysed more than 500 nondomestic buildings in the United Kingdom and found that there was an average performance gap of 40 percent. Furthermore, a study by the Technical University of Munich in 2017 analysed data from nearl