Building Energy Rating (BER) In Ireland by Andrew Waldron
Public awareness of the Building Energy Rating (BER) requirement is gradually increasing throughout the Republic of Ireland 3 weeks after legislation was introduced requiring any home offered for sale or rent to have a BER certificate.
Property agents in Dublin City Centre have reported a steady trickle of inquiries about BER assessment and its necessity in home sales transactions. This is in spite of the severe economic downturn in the country having a significant impact on the number of property transactions as well as January being a traditionally slow month for house sales.
The BER scheme has featured on television ads and received prominence on popular talk-shows on national broadcaster RTE. However, Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI), the body charged with administrating the program still has a lot of work to do to inform the general public that BER certification is a necessity for home sales, not an option.
The BER scheme, introduced to increase public awareness of home energy use and costs and to ultimately aid in the reduction of home energy waste, has not escaped criticism however. An article in the Irish Sunday Times on January 11th drew attention to the work performed by 3 separate energy rating companies and their preliminary results noting that 3 different energy ratings for the same home were produced. The values ranged from an E2 rating to as low as a D2 rating.
The article took this as evidence that the BER testing procedure was flawed and that the results produced should be viewed with skepticism. The article does draw attention to comments by a SEI spokesman who states that the preliminary ratings were not submitted to the SEI for validation and therefore any comparison between ratings is flawed. Upon submission, each BER is subject to a series of validation checks. These checks could easily have ironed out any inconsistencies between the different ratings submitted. This point is not given due prominence in the article.
Andrew Waldron
http://www.energyratedhomes.ie
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