Scotland's non-domestic energy efficiency baseline: report

Introduction

The Scottish Government's Energy Efficient Scotland programme aims to improve energy efficiency and promote low carbon heating in Scotland's homes and non-domestic buildings. The Energy Efficient Scotland Route Map^[1], published in May 2018, sets out that Scotland's non-domestic buildings will be assessed and significantly improved to the extent this is technically feasible and cost effective by 2040.

The Route Map also acknowledges that given the diverse nature of non-domestic buildings there is less known about their current energy performance compared with those in the domestic sector. Historical data on the profile of the non-domestic building stock, and its energy use, is currently limited. However, an increasing amount of data concerning the energy use and energy efficiency of non-domestic buildings has become available since data collected to generate energy performance certificates (EPCs) was first recorded in 2013.

Establishing an energy efficiency baseline for Scotland's non-domestic buildings is therefore essential to enable subsequent monitoring of improvements in energy efficiency and to support the further development of policies targeted at the non-domestic sector.

This report provides an estimate of the baseline energy efficiency performance of Scotland's non-domestic buildings. It is based on almost 30,000 non-domestic EPCs issued between January 2013 and July 2017. The size and typology of Scotland's non-domestic building stock is estimated with the help of non-domestic rates data from Scottish Assessors. Mean EPC ratings across the whole stock are extrapolated from the 30,000 EPCs as outlined in the methodology annex.

Background information on non-domestic EPCs and details on the methodology are provided in the Annex.

Data tables and charts are available alongside this document.