Evaluating How Energy Performance Certificates Could Influence the Supply of Net Zero Carbon Buildings

This paper explores how Energy Performance Certificates could be used for carbon accounting in constructing and managing buildings. Net zero carbon buildings (NZCBs) offer the construction and real estate sectors an approach for addressing climate change. However, there are several barriers to implementing green building practices, restricting climate action Energy Performance Certificates (EPC’s), which offers creditable data for managing the energy usage and the carbon footprint of buildings. The study is grounded in the interpretivist philosophy, and qualitative data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews, from seven real estate developers. The paper has found that while at design stage, green building certification is proactively pursued, and the practice of post-completion monitoring through Energy Performance Certificates is limited. The introduction of climate risk disclosure and climate accounting practices in support of TCFD reporting by major banks is on the increase. In particular, the reporting on split between total energy consumed and metered and the associated carbon footprint of own operations is compared to ‘financed emissions’. The build to rent/affordable rental housing has a high level of post-completion energy usage monitoring and a low level of pre-development green certification. The asset class would appear to be ‘implicitly’ green through operations. Finally, the level of understanding of what a net zero carbon building is and how this category of green building essentially delivers value is limited. This limitation in understanding restricts the effectiveness.