Getting DEC-ed out
February 1st 2008

After a long period of anticipation the Government is at last providing information regarding the implementation of Display Energy Certificates. But with the 1 October deadline looming, there is still a lot of uncertainty amongst Public Sector Energy Managers as to exactly what will be required to comply with the new legislation

Following an initial delay, the enforcement date has now been set for 1 October 2008 when public sector buildings over 1000m2 will be required to display a valid Display Energy Certificate (DEC).

Responsibility for providing the certificate will be with the occupier (not the owner) of the building, and organisations will need to be in possession of an Advisory Report including a list of recommended energy saving measures with penalties being imposed for organisations who do not comply.

The A3-sized certificate needs to be displayed in a prominent place clearly visible to the public. It will look similar to the example shown and will include the Operational Rating which is a benchmark relating to the actual energy performance of the building.

The Advisory Report should be based upon either a walk round survey or just a desk report, dependent upon how much detailed information you have available for that building. It will be approximately 8 pages long, and be based on a question and answer format.

DEC and Advisory Report need to be produced by an Accredited Energy Assessor using benchmarks and the building's energy consumption data. Certificates need to be renewed annually, whilst Advisory Reports are valid for 7 years from date of issue. Fines being imposed for non-compliance are £500 for not displaying the DEC and £1000 for not possessing a valid Advisory Report. Weights and Measures Authorities (usually Trading Standards) have the duty of enforcement.

Challenges Property managers affected by this law are faced with numerous challenges if they want to avoid paying penalties. First is the identification of the buildings affected by the legislation, which are those occupied or part occupied either by a public authority or an institution providing a public service to a large number of persons, and which is therefore frequently visited by those persons. Further information can be found on the Communities and Local Government (CLG) website at www.communities.gov.uk.

In most cases a substantial amount of forward planning will be required for property managers to ensure they have 12 months worth of consumption data available to calculate the operational rating required for the DEC. The experience of the TEAM Energy Management Bureau and their Annual Billing Survey indicates that, on average, over 33% electricity bills and over 70% of gas bills are estimated,making the generation of an accurate Operational Rating difficult. To assist with this, CLG are allowing utility-based estimates in the first few years.

There is growing concern that organisations will be struggling to comply with the legislation in time due to the lack of resources in-house to undertake the DEC production and the expected lack of Accredited Assessors available to carry out the DECs and Advisory reports.

Solutions When looking at the practicalities of complying with the legislation, public sector energy managers who may have hundreds of applicable buildings essentially have two choices: Becoming accredited to carry out the work themselves or outsourcing the activity.

For those property managers who are already using a Monitoring and Targeting software system, this represents the best source of information and should, along with an appropriate DEC module, be used to assist with the production of the certificates, regardless whether this is done in-house or outsourced.

Even though free software will be made available by CLG, this will be basic and suitable for organisations with a small number of sites as information needs to be entered manually for each building from utility bills that may have to be retrieved from account archives.

An accredited DEC module in an M&T software package like the one TEAM provides,would be able to produce certificates in a semiautomatic fashion, using information "mined" from an existing database, thus eliminating the need for repeat entries. This greatly reduces the cost and the time taken to produce DECs.

A DEC module should be easy to navigate, help Accredited Assessors through the process with checks and prompts and be backed up by an approved training course for users to become Accredited Assessors for the particular software package.

The Government is still to announce the exact qualifications and training requirements for anyone wishing to produce DECs and Advisory Reports but it is anticipated that many public authorities affected by this legislation will wish to train employees as energy assessors.

A fully out-sourced service is ideal for organisations with limited time or resource. Accredited Assessors carry out the work on your behalf,provide you with the completed A3-sized DEC and Advisory Report and record all DECs on the Central Register.The DEC service can commence with an Assessor visiting you to determine how many buildings in your estate are affected by the legislation, advise on what information will be required and work with you to complete the exercise.

The DEC service provided by TEAM, that has Government preferred supplier for Energy Bureau and Consultancy services, is covered through the OGCbuying.solutions framework agreement, which means that organisations can use the service without going to tender helping to reduce the time and expense often required to select the best provider.

Whichever route organisations choose to produce their DECs, if they haven't already done so, now is the time to start collecting the required data and ensuring they have the resources - whether in-house or subcontracted - in place to get the task done by 1 October 2008.

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