Energy performance guarantee: what are the challenges and perspectives?

12 March 2015 - Sustainability - France

On 6 March, more than 100 people were brought together in the Construction & Energies incubator for the Eco-Design Chair’s first “Out of the box” morning session. The main topic of reflection for this meeting organised at the initiative of VINCI and ParisTech was the question of energy performance guarantees.

With this first ”Out of the box” session, the Eco-Design Chair is launching a new series of open-innovation events to encourage exchange of views and discussion between stakeholders from different backgrounds - research, industrial groups and start-ups.

This first session focused on the energy performance guarantee, a concept whereby the service provider commits to complying with set energy efficiency targets. We can distinguish between:
- the Intrinsic Energy Performance Guarantee (GPEI in French), defined at design and works phase
- and the real-use Energy Results Guarantee (GRE), defined according to user behaviour and operation of the building.

A two-way perspective on the importance of the “Green Guarantee”

Christian CAYE, VINCI Sustainable Development Delegate, and Maxime TROCMÉ, Environment & Scientific Officer at VINCI, introduced the event, emphasizing the need for openness, dialogue and exchange of information in a fast-changing world. It was recognition of this very fact that led to creation of the Eco-Design Chair, the VINCI-ParisTech platform for scientific philanthropy, back in 2008.

They were followed by a number of other speakers who looked at the issue of energy performance guarantees from different angles.

Alain GRANDJEAN, founding partner of Carbone 4 and economist, focused on the financial challenges of the energy performance guarantee. In March 2015, Alain Grandjean was commissioned by the President of the French Republic to advise the government on innovative financing mechanisms for climate-related projects. With energy transition having become a crucial topic in policymakers’ agendas, he believes that the financial world must be able to rely on a system of certification to guarantee profitability and risk management. Hence, reliable measuring instruments will make it possible to guarantee energy performance, i.e. guarantee the “green” benefits of investments that will, whether in the framework of COP 21 or the Juncker plan to stimulate the European economy, amount to several hundreds of billions of euros.

Philippe ROBART, Director of Engineering and Innovation for VINCI Construction France, and David Ernest, Director of Energy & Innovation at VINCI Facilities, illustrated the need for collaborative work between builder and operator upstream in operational management of projects. Practice shows that responsibility is shared between the different construction players and distributed across all levels to optimise energy consumption and minimise the environmental impact of buildings.

Philippe ROBART presented the global Blue Fabric offer, the concrete outcome of VINCI Construction France’s sustainable development and construction vision. With the OXYGEN guidelines, the pillar of this global offer, VINCI Construction France issues an energy performance guarantee for the structures it builds. In concrete terms, it measures the performance of the building and systems in place during the first year of occupation of the building to validate the project’s success, after integration of real data, in meeting the performances targets announced. It is worth noting that VINCI Construction France was the first builder to sign the GPEI Charter, set up as part of the Sustainable Building Plan.

Lastly, Bruno PEUPORTIER, governor of the Eco-Design Chair, presented the various research perspectives in the field of energy performance guarantees. While earlier practices aimed to evaluate achievable performance levels before the start of works, today’s new practices define a performance objective that integrates sources of uncertainty (behaviour, climate) so as better to manage risks. He laid particular emphasis on the increasingly strong links between physics and sociology as concerns modelling of occupant behaviour.