Climate change and energy policy
One of the principal ways in which the EU and the UK government propose to tackle climate change and meet their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets is through greater energy efficiency, including energy efficiency in buildings.
Buildings are thought to account for approximately 40% of the EU’s total energy consumption and 43% of the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions.
The Commission’s 2011 Energy Efficiency Plan sets out how the EU’s 20% by 2020 target for improving energy efficiency will be achieved. A key priority in the Plan is to improve energy efficiency of buildings.
According to the government, delivering zero carbon buildings and the wider move towards a low carbon economy is going to require a revolution in the way buildings are designed, heated and powered.
The Green Deal
The Green Deal:
- Is the government’s flagship initiative for improving the energy efficiency of buildings in Great Britain, by removing the upfront cost of such measures.
- Is based on a key principle that energy efficiency improvements to properties pay for themselves through the resulting savings on electricity and gas bills (known as the “golden rule”).
- Creates a new “pay as you save” financing mechanism, available from accredited Green Deal providers to allow a range of energy efficiency measures (such as loft insulation or heating controls) to be installed in homes and businesses at no upfront cost.
- Attaches the liability to repay the Green Deal financing to the property’s energy bills, and requires the energy suppliers to recover the Green Deal payments through the energy bills.
- Will have its uptake encouraged in the private rented sector by the imposition of minimum energy performance certificate (EPC) ratings for private landlords by April 2018.
Energy efficiency obligations on landlords: minimum energy efficiency standards (MEES) and consent for energy efficiency improvements
The Energy Act 2011 requires the Secretary of State to make regulations by April 2018 to ensure that a landlord achieves a certain level of energy efficiency in its private rented property in England and Wales, before the landlord can let the property, both for:
- Domestic properties
- Non-domestic properties
The Energy Act 2011 also requires the Secretary of State to make regulations, by 1 April 2016, preventing a landlord from unreasonably refusing consent to a tenant proposing to make energy efficiency improvements to a domestic private rented property. There is no equivalent requirement for non-domestic properties.
MEES Regulations made
The Energy Efficiency (private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/962) Energy Efficiency PR Regulations 2015) are in force from 1 April 2016 (Parts 1 and 2) and from 1 October 2016 (Part 3).
The Energy Efficiency PR Regulations 2015:
- Enable the tenant of a domestic private rented property to request their landlord’s consent to the tenant making energy efficiency improvements to the property.
- Impose a duty on the landlord, and any superior landlord, not to unreasonably refuse consent to the improvements being made.
- Prescribe exemptions as to when such consent will not be considered to be unreasonably withheld.
- Prescribe a minimum level of energy efficiency, defined by reference to EPCs for domestic private rented properties and non-domestic private rented properties.
- Provide that, where the energy performance of a property falls below the minimum level of energy efficiency, subject to exemptions, a landlord may not:
- grant a new tenancy or renew an existing tenancy of a private rented property after 1st April 2018;
- continue to let a domestic private rented property after 1st April 2020; or
- continue to let a nondomestic private rented property after 1st April 2023.
The Energy Efficiency (Domestic Private Rented Property) Order 2015 (SI 2015/799) prescribes additional types of tenancy, so that properties let on those types of tenancy are domestic private rented properties for the purposes of the Energy Efficiency PR Regulations 2015. The Order is in force from 1 April 2016.
MEES requirements to be met by Green Deal
The government intends that much of the work that needs to be done to rental properties to ensure that they meet MEES will be funded by the Green Deal.
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