Choosing an Energy Certificate

There are two types of energy certificate: 

• Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) will be required from 6 April 2008 when commercial buildings are built, sold or rented.
• Display Energy Certificates (DECs) will be required for public buildings and those occupied by public authorities which have a total useful area greater than 1000m2 and provide a public service to a large number of people and therefore frequently visited by those people (eg a school, hospital, government or local authority building).  These will show the actual energy usage of a building and will need to be displayed from 1 October 2008.
• Also, the regulations require that all air conditioning systems above 250 kW will need to be inspected by January 2009. Those over 12kW must be inspected by 4 January 2011. 

These certificates must be produced by an accredited energy assessor or air conditioning asssessor (all of whom can be provided by CIBSE Certification). 

Note: The Government recently announced transitional arrangements for buildings already on the market at 6 April; any building which is on the market before then and remains on the market afterwards will need an Energy Performance Certificate by 1 October at the latest (it is not aniticipated that this will make a huge difference to the number of certificates required)...more here