IT’S OFFICIAL… it’s now the law. If you are selling or renting a home you must obtain an Energy Efficiency Certificate (aka EPC), known as a Certificado de Eficiencia Energética, from 1st June 2013.
Last Saturday, the official gazette of the Government of Spain, Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE), published Royal Decree 235/2013, of 5th April 2013, approving the basic procedure for the certification of energy efficiency of buildings. The publication officially declares the Royal Decree is law.
If you are selling a home you should obtain a certificate before it is advertised in order to provide prospective buyers with energy performance information about the property. Rentals should obtain a certificate if the property is used over four months of the year.
The certificate must be issued by a certified assessor who will visit the property to carry out a survey. They should be an architect, engineer, or a qualified technician who is authorised to undertake building projects and thermal installations for buildings. Once the survey is complete the assessor will take a few days to produce the certificate. The cost of the certificate is not set by the government but by the assessor, and depends on the total floor space of the property.
AVEN (Agencia Valenciana de la Energía) is the registry of the Comunidad Valenciana which shall be responsible for Certificado de Eficiencia Energética inspection and control. However, AVEN is not yet prepared to receive any certificates, and thus, for the moment, a certificate does not need any other processing. In the future, the certicate will need endorsement from the Official Association of Architects (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos), but for the moment, endorsement is not compulsory. It is probable that in the future when the registry is in place, that the certificate needs to be endorsed, but this can be done in the future without any problems.
Failure to comply is an offense under consumer protection law and is punishable according to the General Law on Protection of Consumers and Users and statutory rules. Policing the law will fall to the Autonomous Regions. How quickly and stringently the local authorities implement the new law, only time will tell.
The Royal Decree makes no reference to the time frame to comply with the new law after 1st June 2013. Bear in mind that policing of the new law will undoubtedly take a while, which will allow a honeymoon period, but failure to comply should only be considered at the owners own risk.
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