I will give you a bit of technical policy background. EPCs have been required by the European Union since August 2007. How they are produced is covered under the energy performance of buildings directive. A couple of years ago, Scotland had a choice as to which method and model it would use. There was a consultation on that, to which we responded.
EPCs are generated using a standard assessment procedure, which uses the Buildings Research Establishment domestic energy model 12—I forget the exact sub-version of it, so one of my colleagues watching this probably wants to kick me.
Even though BREDEM has improved over the years, that improvement has been incremental. It was never useful for Scotland in the first place. The original empirical work on the model was done on about 30 semi-detached two-bedroom or three-bedroom properties in Milton Keynes. The further you deviate from standard building archetypes, by which I largely mean standard English building archetypes, the more inaccurate those assessments get—the assessments are of how much energy a building is using and how much it will or will not save under any intervention. The inaccuracies are significant in Scotland; they are exacerbated by traditional build, old build, non-standard building types and the fact that not as much work was done on Scottish properties. By the time you get to an old farmhouse somewhere outside Inverness, you can throw the thing out the window—you genuinely do not know.
It is not just me who is saying that. For years and years, building scientists have said that we can use the models but there are limitations. At this stage, we certainly would not recommend the use of EPCs as a policy driver in the way they are currently being used. The paper that I mention in my written submission is embargoed for the time being, but I will ensure that the committee gets a copy of it when it comes out on 18 December. We have looked at the issue and said that, under the guidance, the EPBD encourages more use of real data. For example, an EPC could state that the building was occupied by a young family household for the last three years and what the average energy consumption was. As a broad assessment, that is the sort of measure that we might recommend.
For a lot of measures, such as installing renewable energy technology, somebody would have to go back in to do a site assessment anyway, so why are we putting it into the EPC that that would give X amount of savings? There should be quite a broad range and it should say that, by the way, somebody needs to come back and have a look.
We can do this. Obviously, with smart technologies coming in, we will be able to get a much better handle on the issue. I am quite critical of the smart meter programme, but smart technology in general is great as a means of getting real and accurate data back to the suppliers and the Government. We are entering a stage when more and more data will come online. We will even be able to get hold of things such as internal temperature data. However, there is a danger that those technologies will benefit the middle class and those who can afford them and who are aware of them first. We need to ensure that good technology gets into homes, and by good, I do not mean the smart meters that are being rolled out at the moment; I mean Google kit or kit developed by proper data managers. I will not recommend any particular technology, but something such as Nest will be better than the subsidised equipment that people can get at the moment.
New York is now subsidising better technologies for households. We could do that for those who need those technologies. The cost would not be substantial, and we would get better data to produce EPCs. Given that the bill looks towards 2040, that could be phased in—there is no reason why we must have everything in place tomorrow. If we know that smart kit is coming online more, we can make more and better use of it.
We do not make enough use of the energy data that local authorities already collect or the household data that housing associations collect, or of the organisations that have the data protection clearance to manage that information. We could start using fairly sensitive information such as health information. We need to consider how we can link in the NHS. We will be proposing—I forget whether it is in the paper that I mentioned or another one—a national energy service along the lines of the NHS. That would be a public energy service that would have the authority to collate and maintain data in a secure environment. That is critical, because the last thing that we want is personal health data being hacked. It has to be behind the sort of public firewall that local authorities and the Government sit behind.