What is the Energy Efficiency Certificate?

 

The energy certificate to sell or rent an apartment is mandatory from 1. of June 2013, with the arrival of the new rules that require all owners of existing homes that are for sale or rent to have an energy performance certificate.

This certificate is only a document, a record, which describe what 'effective' which is our home with respect to energy consumption, with the implications of this consumption: saving energy is saving money and saving emissions, because if our home is efficient get the same level of comfort at a lower cost in electricity, heating ...

With this energy certificate each house will have a label similar to those already included appliances, indicating its efficiency in terms of energy consumption, water etc.

Currently this type of tag is used for some time in the new housing and ranks each building with a color code according to a scale ranging from category A (most efficient) to G (least efficient). Since this is a scale that is familiar to us and is very easy to know if a building is better or worse than another in terms of their energy efficiency.

In addition, the energy performance certificate will include a series of recommendations to improve efficiency, which would increase at least one level on the scale (if the original grade is B / C) or two (when the house has a rating D / E / F / G).

The novelty of the legislation is that, unlike what happened so far (only new buildings should be certified energy), all homes being sold or rented must have their own energy performance certificate, being responsible for obtaining the certificate on the homeowner, building or premises. So, will the homeowners who can apply for the certificate individually and not necessarily the homeowners.

To this we must add that, in principle, once issued the energy performance certificate will have a validity period of 10 years, after which there will be renewed to reflect the possible improvement works have been made in the building or home.