Scotland's non-domestic energy efficiency baseline: report

Current EPC ratings

The mean building emissions rate across Scottish non-domestic premises is estimated to be 111 kg of CO₂ emissions per square metre per year. A building with this modelled emissions intensity would fall into band G, the poorest performance band including all premises with modelled emissions exceeding 100 kgCO₂/m²/yr. A building with median (midpoint of numerically ordered values) modelled emissions would lie within band F, equivalent to between 81 and 100 kgCO₂/m²/yr. This difference between the mean and median reflects the mean being skewed by buildings with extremely high ratings, some in excess of 1000 kgCO₂/m²/yr.

In line with the bandings above, education has the lowest mean emissions intensity at 67 kgCO₂/m²/yr and storage and distribution has a similar mean rating. The mean rating for these properties falls in the middle of band E.

The hotel and restaurant, café and takeaway categories perform particularly poorly with mean ratings of 179 kgCO₂/m²/yr and 177 kgCO₂/m²/yr respectively.

The current EPC rating approach is more useful as an indicator of overall emissions than as an indicator of how a building performs compared to other buildings of a different building type. This is discussed further in the next section.

Figure 5: Mean current EPC rating