Website launches voluntary certificates scheme

The National Energy Foundation and independent energy consultancy, Building Energy Solutions, have launched a new website to support the full commercial release of VolDECs (Voluntary Display Energy Certificates). Following their piloting and testing with office buildings, VolDECs are now available to clients across the non-domestic property sector.

VolDEC is an operational energy performance rating scheme for non-domestic buildings. It’s a not-for-profit scheme, which has been developed through a working partnership between the National Energy Foundation and BES and piloted with Legal & General Property.

Based on the mandatory Display Energy Certificate (DEC) methodology, VolDECs are a simple but robust engagement tool that are easy to understand but with enough information to really help target action to improve energy performance and drive down consumption.

VolDECs have been designed to measure and highlight building energy performance in an easy and consistent way. Based on data that’s easy to assemble, they are inexpensive and quick to produce. In piloting VolDECs with offices, they have been shown to provide a range of benefits; in particular, they address the issues associated with the landlord and tenant energy split and the lack of relevant benchmarks to enable performance to be measured and compared sensibly and consistently.

The VolDEC approach, when applied to offices, also has the benefit of using more granular benchmarks and VolDECs provide property owners and operators with cost-effective, user-friendly energy ratings for areas of a building that they control or manage, and are able to improve. This approach is now being developed into other property sectors, such as shopping centres.

The new website marks the completion of the piloting stage of VolDECs and launches the service into the commercial market, making it fully available across the industry.

In a joint statement, Phil Jones, of Building Energy Solutions, and Malcolm Hanna, technical director of the National Energy Foundation, said:

“The VolDEC scheme plugs a gap in the market and is a useful tool developed by the industry, for the industry. It also establishes a consistent methodology and level of quality, based on authoritative and robust sector-specific benchmarks.

“VolDECs have been designed to make it easy for energy managers to measure and highlight energy performance consistently. They are based on simple data, and are inexpensive and quick to produce. What’s more, they are unique in that they address the issues associated with the landlord and tenant energy split in the office sector.

“The launch of the website is the latest phase in making VolDECs widely available in the market. The next stage will include extending the scheme into other sectors and to incorporate environmental issues such as waste and water, and enhancing the website so that clients can input their data electronically and create their VolDEC certificates via an online portal.”

• For further information: www.voldec.com