- air-conditioning system
means a combination of the components required to provide a form of indoor air treatment, by which temperature is controlled or can be lowered;
- assessment boundary
means the boundary where the delivered energy and exported energy are measured or calculated;
- bi-directional recharging
means bi-directional recharging as defined in Article 2, point (11), of Regulation (EU) 2023/1804;
- bicycle parking space
means a designated space for parking at least one bicycle;
- boiler
means the combined boiler body-burner unit, designed to transmit to fluids the heat released from burning;
- building
means a roofed construction having walls, for which energy is used to condition the indoor environment;
- building automation and control system
means a system comprising all products, software and engineering services that can support energy-efficient, economical and safe operation of technical building systems through automatic controls and by facilitating the manual management of those technical building systems;
- building element
means a technical building system or an element of the building envelope;
- building envelope
means the integrated elements of a building which separate its interior from the outdoor environment;
- building unit
means a section, floor or apartment within a building which is designed or altered to be used separately;
- calculation interval
means the discrete time interval used for the calculation of the energy performance;
- car park physically adjacent to a building
means a car park which is intended for the use of residents, visitors or workers of a building and which is located within the property area of the building or is in the direct vicinity of the building;
- cogeneration
means the simultaneous generation in one process of thermal energy and electrical or mechanical energy;
- cooling generator
means the part of an air-conditioning system that generates useful cooling for uses identified in Annex I;
- cost-optimal level
means the energy performance level which leads to the lowest cost during the estimated economic life cycle, where: The cost-optimal level shall lie within the range of performance levels where the cost-benefit analysis calculated over the estimated economic life cycle is positive;
- deep renovation
means a renovation which is in line with the ‘energy efficiency first’ principle, which focuses on essential building elements and which transforms a building or building unit:
- delivered energy
means energy, expressed per energy carrier, supplied to the technical building systems through the assessment boundary, to satisfy the uses taken into account or to produce the exported energy;
- digital building logbook
means a common repository for all relevant building data, including data related to energy performance such as energy performance certificates, renovation passports and smart readiness indicators, as well as data related to the life-cycle GWP, which facilitates informed decision making and information sharing within the construction sector, and among building owners and occupants, financial institutions and public bodies;
- district cooling
means the distribution of thermal energy in the form of steam, hot water or chilled liquids, from a central or decentralised source of production through a network to multiple buildings or sites, for the use of space or process heating or cooling;
- effective rated output
means the maximum calorific output, expressed in kW, specified and guaranteed by the manufacturer as being deliverable during continuous operation while complying with the useful efficiency indicated by the manufacturer;
- energy consumption
means energy input to a technical building system providing an EPB service intended to satisfy an energy need;
- energy from renewable sources
means energy from renewable non-fossil sources, namely wind, solar (solar thermal and solar photovoltaic) and geothermal energy, osmotic energy, ambient energy, tide, wave and other ocean energy, hydropower, biomass, landfill gas, sewage treatment plant gas, and biogas;
- energy from renewable sources produced nearby
means energy from renewable sources, produced within a local or district-level perimeter of a particular building, which fulfils all of the following conditions:
- energy needs
means the energy to be delivered to, or extracted from, a conditioned space to maintain the intended space conditions during a given period of time, disregarding any technical building system inefficiencies;
- energy performance certificate
means a certificate, recognised by a Member State or by a legal person designated by it, which indicates the energy performance of a building or building unit, calculated in accordance with a methodology adopted pursuant to Article 4;
- energy performance contracting
means energy performance contracting as defined in Article 2, point (33), of Directive (EU) 2023/1791;
- energy performance of a building
means the calculated or metered amount of energy needed to meet the energy demand associated with a typical use of the building, which includes energy used for heating, cooling, ventilation, domestic hot water and lighting;
- energy poverty
means energy poverty as defined in Article 2, point (52), of Directive (EU) 2023/1791;
- European standard
means a standard adopted by the European Committee for Standardization, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization or the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and made available for public use;
- exported energy
means the proportion of the renewable energy, expressed per energy carrier and per primary energy factor, that is exported to the energy grid instead of being used on-site for self-use or for other on-site uses;
- heat generator
means the part of a heating system that generates useful heat for uses identified in Annex I, using one or more of the following processes:
- heating system
means a combination of the components required to provide a form of indoor air treatment, by which the temperature is increased;
- indoor environmental quality
means the result of an assessment of the conditions inside a building that influence the health and wellbeing of its occupants, based upon parameters such as those relating to the temperature, humidity, ventilation rate and presence of contaminants.
- life-cycle GWP
means an indicator which quantifies the global warming potential contributions of a building along its full life cycle;
- major renovation
means the renovation of a building where: Member States may choose to apply point (a) or (b);
- metered
means measured by a relevant device, such as an energy meter, a power meter, a power metering and monitoring device, or an electricity meter;
- micro-isolated system
means any system with consumption less than 500 GWh in the year 2022, where there is no connection with other systems;
- minimum energy performance standards
means rules that require existing buildings to meet an energy performance requirement as part of a wide renovation plan for a building stock or at a trigger point on the market such as sale, rent, donation or change of purpose within the cadastre or land registry, in a period of time or by a specific date, thereby triggering the renovation of existing buildings;
- mortgage portfolio standards
means mechanisms incentivising mortgage lenders to establish a path to increase the median energy performance of the portfolio of buildings covered by their mortgages towards 2030 and 2050, and to encourage potential clients to improve the energy performance of their property in line with the Union’s decarbonisation ambition and relevant energy targets in the area of energy consumption in buildings, relying on the criteria for determining environmentally sustainable economic activities set out in Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852;
- nearly zero-energy building
means a building with a very high energy performance, as determined in accordance with Annex I, which is no worse than the 2023 cost-optimal level reported by Member States pursuant to Article 6(2) and where the nearly zero or very low amount of energy required is covered to a very significant extent by energy from renewable sources, including energy from renewable sources produced on-site or energy from renewable sources produced nearby;
- non-renewable primary energy factor
means an indicator that is calculated by dividing the primary energy from non-renewable sources for a given energy carrier, including the delivered energy and the calculated energy overheads of delivery to the points of use, by the delivered energy;
- on-site
means in or on a particular building or on the land on which that building is located;
- operational greenhouse gas emissions
means greenhouse gas emissions associated with the energy consumption of the technical building systems during the use and operation of the building;
- other on-site uses
means on-site uses other than EPB services, including appliances, miscellaneous and ancillary loads, or electro-mobility recharging points;
- pay-as-you-save financial scheme
means a loan scheme dedicated exclusively to energy performance improvements where a correlation is established in the designing of the scheme between the repayments on the loan and the achieved energy savings, also taking into account other economic factors such as the indexation of the energy cost, interest rates, increased asset value and loan re-financing;
- pre-cabling
means all measures that are necessary to enable the installation of recharging points, including data transmission, cables, cable routes and, where necessary, electricity meters;
- primary energy
means energy from renewable and non-renewable sources which has not undergone any conversion or transformation process;
- public bodies
means public bodies as defined in Article 2, point (12), of Directive (EU) 2023/1791;
- recharging point
means a recharging point as defined in Article 2, point (48), of Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 of the European Parliament and of the Council;
- reference floor area
means the floor area used as reference size for the assessment of the energy performance of a building, calculated as the sum of the useful floor areas of the spaces within the building envelope specified for the energy performance assessment;
- renewable primary energy factor
means an indicator that is calculated by dividing the primary energy from renewable sources from an on-site, nearby or distant energy source that is delivered via a given energy carrier, including the delivered energy and the calculated energy overheads of delivery to the points of use, by the delivered energy;
- renovation passport
means a tailored roadmap for the deep renovation of a specific building in a maximum number of steps that will significantly improve its energy performance;
- residential building or building unit
means a room or suite of rooms in a permanent building or a structurally separated part of a building which is designed for all-year habitation by one private household;
- roofed car park
means a roofed construction, with at least three car parking spaces, that does not use energy to condition the indoor environment;
- self-use
means the use of energy from renewable sources produced on-site or energy from renewable sources produced nearby by on-site technical systems for EPB services;
- smart recharging
means smart recharging as defined in Article 2, second paragraph, point (14m), of Directive (EU) 2018/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council;
- split incentives
means split incentives as defined in Article 2, point (54), of Directive (EU) 2023/1791;
- staged deep renovation
means a deep renovation carried out in a maximum number of steps, asset out in a renovation passport;
- technical building system
means technical equipment of a building or building unit for space heating, space cooling, ventilation, domestic hot water, built-in lighting, building automation and control, on-site renewable energy generation and energy storage, or a combination thereof, including those systems using energy from renewable sources;
- total primary energy factor
means the sum of renewable and non-renewable primary energy factors for a given energy carrier;
- useful floor area
means the area of the floor of a building needed as parameter to quantify specific conditions of use that are expressed per unit of floor area and for the application of the simplifications and the zoning and allocation or re-allocation rules;
- ventilation system
means the technical building system which provides outdoor air to a space by natural or mechanical means;
- vulnerable households
means households in energy poverty or households, including lower middle-income households, that are particularly exposed to high energy costs and that lack the means to renovate the building that they occupy;
- whole-life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions
means greenhouse gas emissions that occur over the whole life cycle of a building, including the production and transport of construction products, construction-site activities, the use of energy in the building and replacement of construction products, as well as demolition, transport and management of waste materials and their reuse, recycling and final disposal;
- zero-emission building
means a building with a very high energy performance, as determined in accordance with Annex I, requiring zero or a very low amount of energy, producing zero on-site carbon emissions from fossil fuels and producing zero or a very low amount of operational greenhouse gas emissions, in accordance with Article 11;