Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) explained

Why get an EPC

If you’re looking to sell or rent out your home, you need an EPC before it goes on the market. You can find an approved assessor to get a new EPC on GOV.UK.

EPCs give recommendations on making improvements to your home (for example, adding insulation or replacing windows) to help improve its overall energy efficiency.

EPCs are also useful if you’re looking to buy or rent a property as it lets you compare the energy efficiency of different properties easily. Choosing a property with a more efficient rating could save you money over years to come.

What information is shown on an EPC

Energy Performance Certificates can look different depending on when or where in the UK they were issued but they all contain the same important information. This includes:

• Key information about the building
• The date of issue
• Estimated energy costs
• An energy efficiency rating
• Recommendations for how the energy efficiency could be improved.

Energy costs

The first part of an EPC starts with an estimate of the current and potential energy bills of the property. Always check this before buying or renting as it will give you an idea of how much your bills could be.

This includes costs for:

• Heating
• Hot water
• Lighting.

It does not include costs for home appliances so your energy bills will be slightly higher in reality.

Energy efficiency rating

The energy efficiency rating is a visual comparison of property performance. This is similar to the energy labels you get on home appliances.

On this section you can find your current energy efficiency rating and also your potential rating if you carried out all the suggested improvements. The ratings range from A (most energy efficient) to G (least energy efficient).

The EPC also shows top actions that you could focus on to save money and make your home more efficient and what the typical savings over three years would be.

Performance

The performance information gives you a breakdown of each element of your property, with a description and an energy rating. This helps you understand the effectiveness of its construction, heating and hot water system and lighting.

You can use this to compare properties when you’re looking to buy or rent.

Heat demand

This section of your report shows how much heat you’re expected to use in the property and how you can reduce that through:

• Cavity wall insulation
• Loft insulation
• Solid wall insulation.

EPC recommendations

The recommendations section of an EPC is important because it gives you a detailed breakdown of the recommended measures, costs, savings and how much each measure could improve the property’s energy efficiency rating.

The recommended measures are shown in order of importance and the energy efficiency improvements figures are based on making the improvements in that order.

The table shows the performance ratings after improvements have been made. For some of the improvements Green Deal finance is ticked. The Green Deal helps you make energy-saving improvements to your home and finds the best way to pay for them. You can find out more on GOV.UK’s Green Deal page.

You can also find an energy grants calculator on GOV.UK’s ways to save energy in your home page.

Our Energy Saving Home Improvement Tool

Our Energy Saving Home Improvement Tool helps you to find ways to make your property more energy efficient and save money in the long term.

It is powered by Energy Saving Trust and creates a personalised plan for you. All you need to do is answer a few questions about your property.

You can provide your own energy information for the most accurate results but the tool also provides suggested answers for you, based on what we know about the area you live in.

Create your plan using our Energy Saving Home Improvement Tool.

Energy Saving Trust

You can find out more and view EPC examples on Energy Saving Trust’s Energy Performance Certificate page.