Guidelines of psychological aspects regarding the EPC usage (display of multi-user perspectives, recommendations for tailored communication measures)

The energy performance certificate (EPC) is an information and market tool for climate protection which shall foster the market for energy efficient living space. It allows potential renters and buyers to compare the energy performance of buildings and provides recommendations on how the energy efficiency of the building can be improved. However, there are potentials for improvement in terms of the user-friendliness of the certificate and the consideration of occupant behaviour in the modeling of building energy use. Hence, the end-users of EPCs such as buildings owners, tenants, building occupants and building managers play a crucial role regarding the redesign of EPCs because learning about their needs can contribute to improve the certificate and exploring their everyday energy behaviour allows to make more accurate assumptions in the modelling of building energy. This report is a synthesis of the findings from the four user-related tasks in the ePANACEA project which are the stakeholder analysis, the user-needs analysis, the acceptance testing (first and final acceptance test) and the exploration of occupants’ energy behaviour. Each research step is briefly recapped (objectives, methods and highlights of the results). Furthermore, the report shows how the research steps (except for the final acceptance test) have influenced the development of new EPC summary pages during the project life time (final version in October 2022). The final chapter provides the recommendations on the next generation of EPC (with a focus on the content and presentation of content in the certificate) that stem from the user-related tasks, including the outcomes from the final acceptance test