{"id":1371,"date":"2010-11-04T18:34:09","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T18:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2010-11-04T18:34:09","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T18:34:09","slug":"epc-misses-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1371","title":{"rendered":"EPC misses target"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By lowering the EPC energy  performance coefficient, the government aims to reduce energy use by  buildings. Dr Olivia Guerra Sant\u00edn has shown however that the EPC barely  works.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s very tempting to think that by simply lowering a  figure you can control the energy aspects of newly built housing,\u201d says  Professor Henk Visscher (OTB), who lectures on housing quality and  process innovation. The reality however is that there are other factors  in play, such as building quality and differences between households  (which can vary up to a factor of 2).<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The much-talked about EPC  (energy performance coefficient) reflects the primary, annual energy  consumption of a building, divided by a weighed total of floor and wall  surfaces. In 1995, the EPC stood at 1.4, but was tightened to 1.2 in  1998. It now stands at 0.8, with a further reduction down to 0.6 coming  into effect as of January 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, one might think  that between 1995 and today the energy consumption of buildings has been  more than halved, but Dr Olivia Guerra Sant\u00edn&#8217;s research proved  otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>Her research was partially based on data derived from  two Ministry of Environment (VROM) databases, which taken together  produce the Dutch housing stock&#8217;s official and representative quality  measure. Moreover, she added a questionnaire, which focussed on the  residents&#8217; lifestyles.<br \/>\nThe results were shocking: according to  statistical analysis, only 20 percent of energy consumption variations  could be explained by differences in EPC-values, while a whopping 80  percent of energy use variation had nothing at all to do with the EPC.  Part of this variation could be explained by taking the various  households into account; however, for nearly half the energy variation,  there was only one explanation: faulty installation work.<br \/>\n\u201cThe  government shouldn&#8217;t set an EPC value without surveying the outcome,\u201d  Prof. Visscher concludes. \u201cNowadays, the quality of insulation and  air-tightness can be easily checked.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Olivia Guerra Sant\u00edn,  Actual energy consumption in dwellings, 19 October 2010, PhD supervisor  Professor Henk Visscher.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Link to article in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delta.tudelft.nl\/nl\/wetenschap\/epc-misses-target\/22012\" target=\"_blank\">Delta<\/a><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By lowering the EPC energy performance coefficient, the government aims to reduce energy use by buildings. Dr Olivia Guerra Sant\u00edn has shown however that the EPC barely works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[157,159,225],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-delta","tag-energy-conservation","tag-epc","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}