MAJOR EPC REPORT BY NATIONAL ENERGY SERVICES ‘SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY’

Since the introduction of HIPs in summer 2007, the many Domestic Energy Assessors and Home Inspectors working within the NHER accreditation scheme have produced 313,000 EPCs.

This month National Energy Services at Milton Keynes have produced a 41 page Report
Entitled ‘Seizing the Opportunity’, it gives four key findings and seven recommendations for EPCs in 2010. There are many graphs and pie charts to illustrate the analysed statistics in the main report.

I will let you read these on the Executive summary link below

http://www.nher.co.uk/documents/news/Seizing_The_Opportunity_Executive_Summary.pdf

The big picture is that about 1 million homes sell each year and if the EPC recommended improvements are made by the buyer, there would be £200M saved on fuel costs and 1,360,000 less tons of CO2 released into the UK pa.

The average household produces 5.4 tons of CO2. If the EPC improvements were done by the home purchaser; this would reduce to 4.2 tons and save £182 pa on energy bills.

Interestingly, within the report, there was a survey of 302 home buyers in October and what their reaction was to the EPC.

• Two thirds of buyers had made some form of improvement to their home since buying it.

• 39% had made significant improvements (like replacing the old boiler with an A rated condensing boiler).

Alastair Darling introduced the boiler scrapage scheme in the Pre Budget Report, and if a home has a G rated boiler (less than 70% efficient), then a £400 grant will be given to install a condensing boiler which is about 92% efficient. It is hoped that this scheme will have the same success as the car scrapage scheme.

This important piece of work opposes the HIP critic’s claim that home buyers ignore EPCs.

This NES report proves that EPCs are read by home purchasers and acted upon to reduce future energy bills.




HRG thanks Alastair Herriott for this article.