Alternative modelling approaches to energy performance certificates

The requirements of energy policy, such as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), has a direct effect on our use of building models and the parameters we seek to characterise. To model total energy consumption of a building is a different task to characterising the demand of that building at a transient level; to do so at scale is an additional level of complexity. With the ubiquity of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) across Europe, there is a tendency to use this as the main vehicle for communicating building energy demand to policy. However, there is growing evidence of EPCs being applied to areas for which they were not designed to serve. By comparing alternative techniques with current methodologies underlying EPCs, this study proposes future directions for standardised energy assessment of dwellings, proposing a framework for critiquing such techniques.