For several years now, Ukraine has had legislation in place that requires real estate agencies and online marketplaces to inform potential buyers or tenants about the energy performance certificates of buildings. This aims to provide buyers with insights into the energy consumption of their future housing and the associated utility costs.
In practice, however, these requirements are rarely met. If you look closely at real estate listings for new developments or apartments, you will find that in most of them, information about the energy efficiency class is missing.
Why is this regulation not working?
The primary reason is the lack of convenient access to building energy performance certificates. An Energy Performance Certificate is a standardised electronic document that specifies a building’s energy efficiency indicators and class. It also provides recommendations for improving energy efficiency, formulated according to the procedure established by law, along with other information required by legislation.
Ukraine has the Unified State Electronic System in the Construction Sector, where data on certificates is supposed to be stored. However, its functionality is flawed:
- finding the required certificate is practically impossible;
- there are no search filters by address, date, or energy efficiency class;
- the average citizen cannot verify the information, and monitoring bodies cannot respond promptly to violations.
In other words, while certificates formally exist, they are effectively “hidden” from those entitled to access them.
Why does this matter?
The availability of a certificate and the disclosure of the energy efficiency class is information that directly affects household expenditure. For example, a Class A building can consume two to three times less energy than a Class C or D building. For residents, this translates into hundreds or even thousands of hryvnias in monthly savings.
What does civil society propose?
Ecoaction has already appealed to the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories, demanding that the operation of the Unified State Electronic System be optimised, specifically by:
- ensuring open access to energy performance certificates;
- enabling search functionality by key parameters (address, energy efficiency class, and date of issue);
- providing monitoring bodies with tools to verify advertisements and monitor compliance with legislation.
In response to our appeal, the state enterprise administering the system assured us that it is currently undertaking organisational and technical measures to refine its functionality. It is significant that the collaboration between civil society, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories, and the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving is already constructive. There is reason to expect that, thanks to this cooperation, the system will become more user-friendly and transparent in the near future. This, in turn, will create better conditions for competition in the energy-efficient housing market.
These steps do not require complex reforms or vast amounts of funding. It is primarily a technical refinement of an already existing system. However, the results could be substantial: genuine protection of consumer rights, market transparency, and an incentive for developers to invest in high-quality, modern buildings.
Author: Iryna Klymas, Energy Policy Specialist at the NGO Ecoaction
Source – thepage.ua
Translated from Ukrainian by Ecoaction volunteer Polina Tsybulska.