BEAMA EPC Reform Position Paper
08 November 2024
ENERGY PERFORMANCE CERTIFICATE (EPC) REFORM MUST INCORPORATE THE PRINCIPLE OF HEALTHY BUILDINGS
The current EPC framework has evolved to focus on energy efficiency performance since the early 2000s, in pursuing the improvement of energy performance in buildings there is a clear disconnect with the need to ensure the building and occupants are healthy. This key aspect of a building’s impact on occupancy is entirely missed across any policy mechanism linked to EPCs or, worse still, Government funding schemes. Even within the Government’s preferred PAS 2030: 2024 framework, ventilation and indoor air quality is the poor relation to energy efficiency with no published evidence to suggest it is delivering change in living standards related to indoor air quality.
BEAMA has marked World Ventil8 Day with the publication of a position paper urging Government to broaden the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) remit to recognise and assess the indoor air quality of homes. Speaking at a World Ventil8 Day meeting in London, Lee Nurse, Business Development Director of Volution Group and Chair of BEAMA’s Ventilation Group said “the expansion of the remit of EPCs is a common sense approach to what is a national health crisis. It is absolutely the right time to enforce the principle that a healthy home is a basic human right. With so much policy focus on retrofitting homes to improve their energy efficiency, we should not be ignoring the ongoing health of occupants”.
