The breakdown of the declared energy consumption of homes for sale in France shows a number of statistical anomalies that point to fraud.
Posted by TheKitof
The breakdown of the declared energy consumption of homes for sale in France shows a number of statistical anomalies that point to fraud.
Posted by TheKitof
4 comments
The distribution data of EPCs (Energy Performance Certificates – DPE in french) reveal striking anomalies around regulatory thresholds (2021):
* Abnormal spike at 250 kWh (D/E limit): +180% compared to neighboring values.
* Sharp drop at 330 kWh (E/F limit): -58% right after crossing the threshold.
🔍 **𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭?**
→ Possible manipulation of results to avoid less attractive E/F/G ratings.
→ Questionable practices (forced rounding, “convenient” errors)?
📉 **𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞:**
Market reliability: EPCs influence prices and buying decisions.
Green transition: distorted data slows down renovation efforts.
source : [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marclebel_immobilier-dpe-activity-7336665367701843968-TjUv](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marclebel_immobilier-dpe-activity-7336665367701843968-TjUv)
Or it could be that people that had a very close D/E rating are more likely to sell because they know they won’t pass it next time and don’t want the hassle.
But the fact that these ratings are ripe with fraud is well documented.
Just like the US election.
Speaking for my UK EPC – it was a load of nonsense.
It suggested measures on the order of £50,000.
Itself it only predicted savings of about £700 per year.
But those savings were vastly inflated. For instance, it claimed that I could save more energy per year on one single line item than I actually USED in the course of a year. Their payback time was about over 50 years, actual realisitic payback time – if I got energy consumption down to ZERO using their proposed methods – was 200 years.
They wanted wall insulation, more loft insulation (it is no exaggeration that they wanted it thick enough that the loft would be entirely inaccessible in my little house), floor insulation, to double a hot water cylinder’s insulation (in a cupboard that doesn’t have a mm to spare with the existing cylinder, and for which I can’t ever imagine fitting a replacement cylinder because it would never fit the same way), “high heat-retention storage heaters”, solar water heating (in the UK?), replacing all the doors (which were recent FENSA-certified UPVC installs) and then solar panels and changing the lightbulbs.
I ignored most of that entirely.
Mostly because:
– The house insulation (loft, wall, floor, doors) is already AMAZING. All I did was neaten up to cover a couple of small gaps in the loft and that was enough to maintain the house at a livable temperature all year round. I live in an extremely windy valley, with the house open to the elements… and it really holds heat very, very well. Probably better than any house I’ve ever lived in.
– Installed my own heatpumps. I already had storage heaters, and they were categorically worthless not because of their design… but their usage. Why would you bother with them nowadays, and certainly why would you rip them out to replace them with… storage heaters? I just threw them away. My house now uses 200W intermittently to sustain 20C when it’s 0C outside.
– Changed all the lightbulbs and replaced 1.5KW of bulbs in the process with about 100W of LED. Their “savings” from this are more than my house uses.
– Installed my own solar. One-tenth the price of theirs, with more savings than theirs, and yet it only runs a small isolated part of the house. Plan is to expand over time but… honestly… no rush. I can run the heatpumps off solar and heat the house for free, even in the winter.
My total spend is less than almost any single item on the list (lightbulbs excluded).
They gave me an E rating, which I think is hilarious. They predicted I would currently use 9000KWh a year on space heating alone, and another 1700KWh on water heating.
Meanwhile, in an all-electric house, my actual, real, measured annual consumption for the last 2 years is about 1800KWh/year. A fraction of what they say it is. And on its own my entire usage is less than their savings were ever predicted to save each year (suggesting I would produce net profit energy even without the solar).
It seems they basically just made up figures in order to… what… deny me a heatpump grant (for which you have to clear the outstanding items on your EPC)? Sell me a solar system? I don’t know. They just inflated the usage figures ENORMOUSLY, bigged up savings that were impossible anyway, and then assigned high prices to largely useless measures that wouldn’t pay back in this century. All to issue a bad EPC to the former homeowner when they were trying to sell it to me.
Fortunately, I just ignored the whole thing. I’m not going to make the poor guy selling me the house do that work to get to a “good” EPC with that level of nonsense in it before I bought the house off him. I saw it was nonsense during the purchasing and ignored it entirely, and I’ve spent almost nothing since compared to their recommendations.
I reckon if I wanted to bung someone a few hundred pounds and gave them my smart meter stats, I could actually get them to A-grade me with only a couple of minor suggestions.
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