Building professionals’ views on energy efficiency compliance requirements

In Sweden, the national building code (BBR) stipulates the specific energy use as an indicator to verify whether a new building is complying with its design-phase energy performance values. However, previous studies have shown that there may be large differences between the calculated specific energy and the actual monitored energy use. The differences are attributed to various reasons including the actual energy behaviour of the occupants as compared to the standard values used in the simulations. This may lead to disputes between the client and the contractor on the responsibility of meeting the energy requirements. In this study an adapted version of Delphi methodology was used to understand the building professionals' view on various indicators used to verify building energy performance. The study showed that professionals are concerned with the use of specific energy as an indicator in the building procurement process as they do not have control over the occupants' energy behaviour. Majority of the professionals expressed a large confidence in the average U-value of the building, component U-values and the specific heat loss figure by the Swedish center for zero-energy buildings as indicators of building energy performance. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.