Government launches consultation on Home Energy Model energy rating system
The Government is proposing a new energy rating system called the Home Energy Model which will be used to generate Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs).
The government has launched a public consultation on a newly proposed home energy rating system to replace the long-standing Standard Assessment Procedure or SAP rating. SAP is the government’s current system for assessing and comparing the energy performance of homes, and is used to generate Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs).
The new energy rating system is called the Home Energy Model and has been designed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) ahead of the implementation of the Future Homes Standard, which will apply to new homes built from 2025. The Home Energy Model is seen as more suited to the technologies required to decarbonise the country’s housing stock, including heat pumps, new storage technologies and smart control devices.
The Home Energy Model will be used to set standards for new homes to ensure that they will be ‘zero carbon ready’, future-proofed with low carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency. The government has also indicated its intent to use the Home Energy Model rating system to generate future Energy Performance Certificates.
The Home Energy Model is designed to work in a modular way to support many different applications where energy performance assessments are required. It has a higher time resolution and can model energy performance for every half-hour of the year, enabling better representation of smart technologies and storage.
Gillian Charlesworth, the chief executive of BRE, said “The introduction of the Home Energy Model is a significant milestone on the road to achieving net zero across the UK’s housing stock.
“As uptake of green technologies increases, an effective assessment methodology which accounts for these changes will be imperative as the Government looks to secure buy-in from homeowners, house builders, and the retrofit industry on the net zero transition and achieve its targets in this area.
“BRE has worked closely with government since SAP was introduced, and we are excited about the potential for ambitious policies and programmes for low carbon homes which the latest version will support. These changes to the SAP methodology will have wide-reaching impacts not only for government, but across industry. I therefore urge all relevant stakeholders to take part in this consultation to ensure that the final design of the Home Energy Model is as well informed as possible.”
The government consultation opened this week and will finish on March 6 2024. You can give your views on the consultation here.
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