Penalties and Mandatory Energy Certificates

A recent update to the rules of increasing the energy efficiency of residential buildings published in 2009 has been performed early this year and the law proposal has been sent to the Romanian Parliament, after the public debate ended in November 2011, according to Emilia-Cerna Mladin, President of the Association of Energy Auditors for Buildings (AAEC Romania). The law proposal includes, besides the fiscal facilities addressing the owners of buildings to which there were performed workings of energy efficiency , as the heat enveloping among others, but also the penalties for commercial transactions which don’t include the information regarding the energy efficiency certificate. Therefore, according to the new law proposal, the local councils can offer tax exemptionor reduction from this tax for a building or apartment which can prove the energy efficiency upgrade working documents (take over certificate, construction permit) for a period of at least 7 years.“The ordinance whch have been published in 2002 had no effect, due to the lack of penalties which were not included,” stated Mladin. According to estimates, in general the price of issuing certificates for residential buildings typically range from EUR 200E - EUR 600.  For the non-residential buildings the range can vary significantly from few hundred Euros for small and simple buildings up to 20 000 EUR for large and complex buildings. The main factors that influence the price of the certificate are the experience of the auditor, the methodology used, the size and geometry of the building, among others. With some EUR 360 million redirected EU funds from other operationl programs to the heat rehabilitation for buildings, the money will not suffice for more than 250,000 apartments of a total of 1.4 million countrywide. “So far, at most 5 percent of the total apartments stock of Romania has been modernized thorugh heat rehabilitation,“ stated Mladin.