Analysis of Member States' rules for allocating heating, cooling and hot water costs in multi-apartment/purpose buildings supplied from collective systems

Energy savings achieved through the improvement of metering and billing of individual consumption of heating/cooling and domestic hot water in multi-apartment and multi-purpose buildings can make a contribution to the scaling up of efforts to achieve the energy efficiency targets of the EU in 2020 and beyond. The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) is the cornerstone of the legal framework for accurate metering and billing of individual consumption of heating/cooling and domestic hot water in multi-apartment and multi-purpose buildings in the EU. It requires the introduction of consumption-based cost allocation and sub-annual informative, consumption based billing of heating, cooling and hot water in multi-unit buildings, subject to certain conditions. Individual meters and billing permit a fairer system of repartition of the energy costs among the occupants of multi-apartment buildings based on actual energy consumption rather than estimation done according to the size of the dwelling, etc. The purpose of this report is to provide a systematic overview of the existing thermal cost allocation rules in Member States, characterising them in term of key features, such as the permitted/recommended ranges of share of variable cost allocated according to readings from individual metering devices, use of correction factors and minimum and maximum thresholds etc. The outcome of this report might be used to guide Member States in designing/revising their thermal energy cost allocation rules.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable