Energy rating of buildings

If you are weighing up a purchase, the practical page is this one: how to find out the energy rating of a house. Here you will find where the data comes from and how we use it.

What we use

The energy registers of buildings of the Regions that publish energy performance certificates (APE) with their address:

• Lombardy, with CENED+2: all certificates lodged since 2015, over two million, in the public domain;
• Piedmont, with SIPEE: 920 thousand valid certificates under a CC BY 4.0 licence, which besides the address also give the cadastral sheet and parcel.

Each certificate has the construction year, the rating from A4 to G and the estimated consumption.

How we use it

The address written on the certificate is matched to the official street number (ANNCSU register), even when it is written in short form. In Piedmont, where one street number in three has no position yet, the certificate is matched to the cadastral plot it states. For each flat we keep only the most recent certificate. Then the report counts:

• the certificates of the flats at the address, with the most common rating, how many are rated F or G and the stated construction period;
• the certificates within 300 metres, for comparison.

The result is favourable if the building's middle rating is C or better, worth considering if it is F or G, informative otherwise.

Never a single flat

The report never gives the rating of a specific flat. The building is described only with at least three certificates: with one or two you could read the rating of a particular home. The rating of the flat you want to buy is on its certificate, which the seller must show from the listing onwards.

Limits

• Only Lombardy and Piedmont publish certificates with their address. In other regions the section does not appear in the report, and is not counted among the topics.
• A certificate is made when a flat is sold, let or renovated: it describes the building through the flats that have one, not all of them.
• Some certificates have an address that cannot be matched: they stay out of the building's figures.

Official pages: CENED+2 database, dati.lombardia.it and Piedmont energy performance certificates, dati.gov.it.