Businesses face a big increase in costs
The Commission sent on June 28 a reasoned opinion to Cyprus for failure to notify national implementing measures requested in 2002 Energy Performance of Buildings directive.
The reasoned opinion (the second step of an infringement procedure) was also sent to Greece, Hungary, Malta and Sweden.
The Directive aims at reducing energy consumption in buildings. Member states have to lay down minimum energy performance standards and issue energy certificates.
While reducing energy consumption is a noble goal, the directive must have come into force before the Commission’s drive to balance the benefits and costs to business of new legislation, for one can safely assume that the huge costs of issuing such mandatory certificates will be passed onto businesses and then onto the consumer, assuming that the small business can survive the extra cost.
The energy performance of a building has to be reflected in an energy certificate, which is basically a label for a building, in some ways similar to the label on household appliances.
The UK recently announced that the certificate would be obligatory for property sales, thus piling more costs onto sellers at a time when other new UK requirements will add thousands to the seller’s bill.
The energy certificate will have to come with advice on how to improve the energy performance of an existing building and what the investment costs and the pay back time on the investment is likely to be.
So businesses are likely to see inspectors crawling over buildings giving advice that will no doubt conflict with that of the health and safety regulations, fire regulations, electricity regulations and so on.
In addition, Member States need to ensure that heating and air conditioning installations are regularly inspected to enable performance improvement.
Cyprus is in the dock because it has provided “insufficient information” as a reaction to the first letters for failure to notify implementing measures, which the Commission sent in February of this year.
Member States should have implemented the energy performance of buildings directive by 4 January of this year.
