POLICY DISPLAY ENERGY CERTIFICATES
perceived limitations of the current DECs. Justin Snoxall, head of the business group
at British Land, said DECs were a ‘great management tool’ that prove you can make major cost savings by managing building systems better without having to invest in new equipment. However, he said the current DECs were ‘not fit for purpose. The calibration has not been assessed against private buildings’. ‘DECs are driving the installation of
CIBSE VIEWPOINT
CIBSE supports the wide- spread application of DECs, which can make energy and carbon performance visible and spur action.
With RIBA, CIBSE is also supporting Carbon Buzz, which allows design and building teams to understand actual performance in use and bridge the gap between DECs and EPCs.
CIBSE would like to see a simpler entry level to DECs, with automatic updates from the utilities, together with a more advanced level for those who can afford to go into extra detail.
CIBSE assisted the British Property Federation in developing the Landlord’s Energy Statement (LES) in preparation for DECs in commercial buildings, which at the time did not happen. The LES can now be revisited.
In the 1990s, the government’s £ 200m Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme included a wide range of energy consumption guides, which CIBSE drew upon for Guide F and the TM46 benchmarks. These are now long out of date.
There needs to be a major government effort on updating benchmarks to provide effective drivers towards the step- change government policy now envisages for the energy and carbon performance of the building stock.
The benchmarking work needs to be well coordinated. The CIBSE Benchmarks Group is here to help, but the magnitude of the task needs much more than our volunteer resources.
48 CIBSE Journal April 2012
meters so we are all getting a better handle on energy data,’ he added. ‘We look for a 5% energy reduction year-on-year, but we also need to be able to compare results with other buildings and, crucially, compare design with operation – that’s what we are looking for from DECs.’ A £1m investment in meters produced payback in three years across the group’s property portfolio because the data gathered allowed for better energy management, he said. As a result, Snoxall believes DECs will have an increasing influence on property transactions. However, he said there was a need for the system to provide more specific information for landlords. ‘We have whole-building DECs and occupier ones; now we need landlord DECs to illuminate the full energy picture,’ said Snoxall. ‘This would allow landlords to improve management of the services they provide in multi-let office buildings.’ Across British Land’s office portfolio,
shared services account for 36% of CO2 emissions, common parts 14% and tenant energy use the other 50%, he said. Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust
said: ‘Unfortunately, the government sees DECs as red tape; they don’t understand their value in making performance visible, and so the system is not properly underpinned. Achieving a DEC rating is often seen as an end in itself; people are too busy filling in surveys to actually do anything about the waste in building operation.’ The seminar considered the example of
Australia, where rents are now being linked directly to energy ratings, so that tenants are encouraged to put a value on better energy performance. This prompted Paul Edwards, head of sustainability at the developer Hammerson, to challenge engineers to ensure performance ratings recorded in DECs
matched the design ratings stated on Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). ‘Come on building services engineers;
we need to get DECs to equal EPCs – if you deliver that we will pay you – and if you don’t we will penalise you. If you deliver an A-rated building I will give you a bonus,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to know how it is done; I just need to achieve it and be able to hold people to account. ‘DECs are good for the private building
sector because they create value by making your building look better than others. No-one wants a G-rating in their lobby,’ added Edwards. ‘We won’t necessarily get more rent, but we will have fewer empty buildings.’ The legislators were also accused of
Unfortunately, the government sees DECs as red tape – they don’t understand their value in making performance visible
getting hung up on carbon savings, when the key driver for commercial property investors was energy used and costs. Andy Stanton, head of sustainable buildings at Transport for London (TfL), said his organisation had adopted DECs
voluntarily and
used them to create internal competition to improve energy savings. As a result, TfL has increased the number
of energy meters it used from 30 to 900 and has improved its ratings by 10% across its estate. It has also reduced the number of G-rated properties by 50%. However, he said that managing the data
from the meters ‘has been very difficult, and converting it into something useful was challenging’. He said some things remained frustrating, including the amount of energy used in buildings when they were unoccupied. Conference chairman Phil Jones of
CIBSE’s Energy Performance Group concluded that DECs had proved themselves an extremely useful tool. Sub-metering has become much more common and the cost has fallen. However, there needed to be a big investment in benchmarking. He added that compliance rates were disappointing and too many DECs were set at a ‘default’ rating of G, which meant the building had not actually been assessed – the owners had simply met their legal obligation to have a DEC. Under the new rules, he pointed out, that will no longer be allowed.CJ
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