Up close and dynamic: why we need – and how we can deliver – a new understanding of the energy efficiency opportunity in Europe’s homes

摘要

Across Europe, there is limited access to quality data on the energy efficiency of the building stock for governments and the supply chain. A recent report by the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) summarised that: “In Europe, availability of building data is rather poor which results both from data gaps but also from lower transparency and limited access to data.”1 This has several negative consequences for the retrofit market in Europe: 1. Governments are less able to put in place robust targets and policies for carbon reduction. 2. Manufacturers have lower confidence to invest without evidence as to the scale of the market. 3. Installers do not have an efficient means of targeting their markets leading to a higher overall cost of delivery. 4. Households have limited routes to access key energy efficiency information on their own homes to inform decisions and inspire action. Simultaneously, across the retrofit landscape, many of the mass marketed, quick win measures have been completed. For example, in the UK is estimated that only 0.5 % of lofts have no insulation2. The challenge is therefore moving towards opportunities specific to each home, such as solid wall insulation and micro renewable technologies. Identifying these market opportunities relies to a greater extent on good quality data to target the right homes with the right measures. The good news is that energy efficiency data is now being produced on an unprecedented scale across the EU. In 2014, 24 countries have an operational energy performance certificate (EPC) register3. Data is available on up to 40 % of homes depending on the member state4. The challenge is therefore in making that data accessible in a useful format. Through the use of statistical models, big data analytical tools and geo-spatial mapping it is increasingly becoming possible to make data available in intuitive and powerful formats that enables users to gain valuable insight and improve decision making. This paper highlights good practice examples of member states collecting, analysing and making data available to a range of market actors to facilitate a step change in the delivery of energy efficiency retrofit.