Energy experts in Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Spain have successfully tested and positively assessed the iBRoad2EPC model building Renovation Passport, developed as part of the iBRoad2EPC Horizon 2020 funded project. The comprehensive field test involved 48 energy experts and 37 building owners who evaluated the application of iBRoad2EPC in 57 residential and non-residential buildings between July 2023 and March 2024. Energy experts found iBRoad2EPC easy to use, and building owners found the output extremely informative and useful in planning a step-wise deep renovation of their building. Overall, the field test demonstrates that the iBRoad2EPC Renovation Passport, together with the Energy Performance Certificate, has significant potential to support the implementation of the 2024 EPBD recast and help meet the EU’s building decarbonisation targets.

THE TOOL

The ambition of the iBRoad2EPC project has been to develop a capable tool that is sufficiently flexible and affordable to trigger a major increase in the number of deep (nearly zero or zero emissions) building renovations, across varying country contexts. In this sense, it was conceived as a complement to existing national Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) schemes, to be jointly issued by a qualified or certified energy expert, following an on-site visit.

The developed iBRoad2EPC is a flexible model Renovation Passport that brings together the benefits of the EPC, as an established tool to assess the energy performance of a building, with those of a tailored roadmap for its deep renovation in a maximum number of steps, significantly improving the building’s energy performance. Adding new components to this combined approach –covering, e.g., Energy Demand, Investment Cost, Smart Readiness, Indoor Environmental Quality, Measured Energy Performance and others– iBRoad2EPC aims to give renovation a significant push and contribute to the improvement of the energy performance of European buildings, while providing for health, comfort, cost-effectiveness and energy security.

Designed as a modular tool, the iBRoad2EPC Renovation Passport allows adaptation to various existing EPC schemes or country-specific ambitions and contexts. Such flexibility is now reflected in the provisions of the 2024 EPBD recast that allow Member States to determine the extent to which Renovation Passports and EPCs should be linked. As such, the results of the iBRoad2EPC project are highly relevant and provide Member States with a set of solutions that can be immediately applied to the transposition and/or implementation of this, as well as other, important EU policy instruments.

TESTING

A field test in six pilot countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain) examined how iBRoad2EPC is perceived by relevant end-users (energy experts and building owners/building managers).

Prior to field testing, a total of 202 energy experts in the six pilot countries were trained on how to issue the iBRoad2EPC. The overall evaluation following the training showed predominantly positive feedback:

• 86 % of trained experts saw potential in merging iBRoad2EPC and EPCs
• 91 % said they would offer an iBRoad2EPC to their clients

Of the energy experts trained, in total 48 participated in the field test and issued 57 iBRoad2EPCs, covering a built area of almost 280,000 m², of both residential and non-residential buildings, with particular focus on public buildings. An overview and main highlights of the iBRoad2EPC field test are summarised in Table 1 (see next page).

OUTCOMES

The experience of the experts and the building owners/building managers who took part in the testing was collected through a survey. The key findings of the evaluation are the following:

• 85 % of the experts and 70 % of the owners said that iBRoad2EPC provides the building user/owner with very or extremely useful information.

• 87 % of the experts and 78% of the owners said that iBRoad2EPC provides the building user/owner with an outline of a long-term renovation plan for their building.

• 98 % of the experts and 83 % of the owners found the detailed description of single renovation steps in iBRoad2EPC very or extremely useful.

• The highest rated feature of iBRoad2EPC was the description of preparatory measures for later renovation steps (notes to avoid lock-ins), with 37 % of the experts rating these extremely useful, and another 46 % very useful.

• At least half of the building owners felt motivated to conduct concrete renovation measures through the iBRoad2EPC, while 63 % of the experts believe the tool will motivate owners to renovate.

• 91 % of the experts would recommend the tool to their clients and 93 % to their colleagues.

• 80 % of the building owners would recommend the tool to other building owners

• Both experts and owners favoured the voluntary integration of iBRoad2EPC alongside the EPC, reflecting the tool’s potential to enhance energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness in building renovations.

• In terms of pricing, 35 % of the experts and 31 % of the building owners consider a surcharge of more than 100 % on top of the price of the EPC to be reasonable. This demonstrates the perceived value and potential of iBRoad2EPC in contributing to energy-efficient renovations and climate protection.

Table 1: Overview and main highlights of the iBRoad2EPC field test.

ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS

Some other interesting outcomes of the survey are summarised below.

• Building owners reported that their main motivation for renovating is to save on energy costs, followed by introducing qualitative improvements to their building and contributing to climate change mitigation. While energy and cost considerations were important across all pilot countries, climate protection was more important in some than in others; this suggests different national priorities. During the development of iBRoad2EPC, cost-effectiveness was not the priority focus, because cost-effective renovations do not always meet climate targets: there is a clear discrepancy between renovation costs and incentives on one hand, energy and CO₂ pricing on the other. However, to meet the market demand for information on cost savings through renovation, as evidenced in the field tests, a more detailed cost calculation for the first renovation step can be implemented in iBRoad2EPC as an additional improvement. The short timespan until this first step allows for more reliable predictions and increases the confidence in the results of such a cost calculation.

• Building owners and property managers are largely supportive of the mandatory on-site visit component of iBRoad2EPC, despite the extra work involved for the experts.

• Overall, end users agree on the usefulness of iBRoad2EPC for multi-family and public/administrative buildings, recognising its ability to provide essential insights for long-term renovation planning and proactive mitigation of lock-in situations. Feedback from energy experts and building owners, alongside considerations for the iBRoad2EPC pricing structures, underscore the perceived value and potential of iBRoad2EPC in facilitating energy-efficient renovations and climate change mitigation efforts.

FURTHER READING

• The iBRoad2EPC overall concept is described in the report “Conceptualising iBRoad2EPC – How Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) can be upgraded with Building Renovation Passport (BRP) elements”.

• Material on how to use iBRoad2EPC is available as part of the “iBRoad2EPC training toolkit”.

• For the full iBRoad2EPC training evaluation please see the report “Evaluation of iBRoad2EPC training”.

• The full iBRoad2EPC test results are included in the report “iBRoad2EPC field test results”.

• Guidance for policy makers on how to maximise the use of iBRoad2EPC and best prepare the ground for the transposition of the EPBD recast, in terms of the design and uptake of a Renovation Passport to accelerate deep renovation, is available in the report “Accelerating deep renovation in the EU with Renovation Passports – EU roadmap proposing concrete measures to maximise the uptake of iBRoad2EPC schemes”. This also includes a detailed analysis which shows the iBRoad2EPC solution for each relevant article of the EPBD recast.

• The iBRoad2EPC report “Enhancing incentives through iBRoad2EPC – How to best use financial and non-financial incentives for renovation in implementing markets” lists various examples of incentives linked with EPCs or improvements in energy performance and offers ways to best use iBRoad2EPC in incentive schemes for renovation.

• Νational guides on the roll out of iBRoad2EPC in the six implementing countries are included in the report “iBRoad2EPC: Public authorities views on the integration potential”.

The iBRoad2EPC series of useful resources can be accessed at the iBRoad2EPC website www.ibroad2epc.eu.

For further information please contact:

iBRoad2EPC Coordinator: Alexander Deliyannis a@sympraxis.eu, Sympraxis, Greece

iBRoad2EPC leader of field test activities: Peter Mellwig peter.mellwig@ifeu.de and Florian Maiwald florian.maiwald@ifeu.de, ifeu, Germany

For Bulgaria: Alexander Stankov astankov@eneffect.bg, EnEffect

For Greece: Alice Corovessi ac@inzeb.org and Eleftheria Touloupaki et@inzeb.org, INZEB

For Poland: Karolina Junak kjunak@kape.gov.pl, KAPE

For Portugal: João Cleto, joao.cleto@adene.pt, ADENE

For Romania: Horia Petran hp@incd.ro, INCD URBAN-INCERC

For Spain: Alicia de la Fuente alicia.delafuente@gbce.es, GBCe and Ander Bilbao ander.bilbao@ciclica.eu, Ciclica