To fully unlock the potential and benefits of EPCs, the existing certification regimes at Member State level have to be properly implemented and endorsed, supported by well-functioning management, control and monitoring mechanisms.

In order to do so, the consortium partners of the H2020 project X-tendo are developing new metrics and system that could be used on or alongside EPCs, to better promote low carbon buildings. The new brief reports developed describe the basic concepts, highlight existing cases and outline first suggestions for the implementation of the 10 innovative features. But what are these features and which innovation would they bring? Each of the approaches used for the features, described in the ten brief reports, might inform future developments of national EPC systems or be used by private providers developing advice and information resources that work alongside EPCs:

• A Smartness indicator on/alongside the EPC
• A Comfort indicator on/alongside the EPC
• An assessment of district heating readiness as part of the EPC process
• More detailed and specific enhanced recommendations for different energy efficiency measures on the EPC
• Indicators for the Local Air Pollution Contributor and Indoor Air Purity on/alongside the EPC
• Methodologies that integrate to EPCs on-board monitoring data and diagnose the difference between measured and calculated energy use
• A methodology for implementing quality assurance routines of EPC databases
• Availability of granular performance and maintenance data in addition to the energy performance certificate (EPC) in the logbook 
• Integration of financial support alongside with the EPC recommendations
• Links EPC data to one-stop-shops

Ahead of the X-tendo testing phase in its 9 countries and in conjuction with the start of the national stakeholder workshops, these reports describe the scope of applications of each feature, needed level of expertise, developed methodology and the compliance with the four X-tendo cross-cutting criteria.