FRANKFURT (Dow Jones) – According to a report in Der Spiegel magazine, scientists and consumer advocates are questioning the validity of current energy certificates. These classify the condition of a building based on the energy consumption of three previous years – with sometimes misleading results: people used an unusually large amount of energy during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022 they were asked to save. If consumption certificates were now issued based on these years, they would “under no circumstances” allow any conclusions to be drawn about the future, warn the Aachen energy economists Constanze Liepold and Paul Fabianek. It can be assumed that a large proportion of the energy certificates issued in 2023 will be “practically unusable”.
Consumer advocates share the concerns: “The weaknesses of consumption certificates are currently becoming particularly clear,” says Christian Handwerk from the North Rhine-Westphalia Consumer Center. The more expensive alternative to consumption certificates are so-called demand certificates, which determine the energy requirement based on structural criteria. However, they are only required for old houses that do not meet the first thermal insulation regulations of 1977, as well as for new buildings and newly insulated buildings. In the future there should only be need-based certificates, demands Handwerk. However, the federal government would have to revise the Building Energy Act to achieve this. In the most recent controversial amendment, the traffic light coalition limited itself to heating tongues, complains Handwerk. Unfortunately, she has “unfortunately not yet addressed the regulations for energy certificates”.
DJG/hru
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 04, 2023 05:43 ET (09:43 GMT)