The Guidelines for the Cost Optimal Methodology - published last week by the European Commission
On 19th of April the European Commission published guidelines (accompanying Commission Delegated Regulation No 244/2012 of 16 January 2012 supplementing Directive 2010/31/EU) on the energy performance of buildings by establishing a comparative methodology framework for calculating cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements for buildings and building elements.
The guidelines include information that is supposed to help Member States to apply the methodology to their national calculations. It includes details on how to etstablish the reference buildings, how to select and consider the relevant packages of energy efficiency measures and measures based on the renewable energy sources, how to calculate the primary energy demand based on the selected measures, how to calculate the global costs in terms of net present value for each reference building, estimated long term energy price developments etc.
Each national government will have to collaborate with the stakeholders on their market to gather cost data from recent building projects and standard offers of construction companies. These real market data on buildings and building elements in combination with the use of existing cost databases should be the base of the global cost calculation. It will incorporate all upfront investments and future replacement costs, operational and other running costs, as well as energy payments for the various energy efficiency measures and measures based on the renewable energy sources and packages of measures applied to different reference buildings. The cost optimal level of requirements is when the global cost is minimal. The collaboration with the private sector will be essential in each Member State both for getting the relevant data on the costs but also for establishing the right energy efficiency measures and the ones based on the renewable energy sources and their various combined packages.
More on the Cost Optimal Methodology and the deadlines for Member States included in the Delegated Regulation can be found here.
More on the text of the Guidelines here.