The Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) assessment process faces several limitations, including time-intensive data collection, reliance on default thermal parameters, and outdated static modelling techniques that fail to capture real energy consumption patterns. Many professionals still use reference tables rather than advanced digital tools, leading to estimations based on construction year rather than precise building characteristics. Moreover, asset ratings focus on intrinsic building quality rather than actual performance, as simulations rarely incorporate real-world conditions like local weather data or realistic system usage. Renovation advice within EPCs is often generic and unreliable due to cost constraints and limited time for thorough analysis. To address these shortcomings, EPC RECAST has developed a refined methodology and a structured toolkit, prioritising residential buildings and improving assessment accuracy, digital integration, and renovation recommendations for property owners.

The EPC RECAST protocol is based on digital data implementation. This includes everything from an EPC assessor using augmented reality on-site to precisely measure the dimensions of a property and create a 3D model, to the calibration of that energy model—where the owner and consultant can update it by uploading files such as photos, invoices, and construction budgets. Additionally, data for asset rating (from A to G) can be obtained through algorithms as a result of running various dynamic energy simulations within the model. Finally, the assessor can use a Renovation Roadmap web service to fill in a new EPC template that was developed following the requirements of Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD).

The process was tested on 80 pilot dwellings in six participating countries (France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Spain). Both conventional EPCs and EPC RECAST certificates were issued for each property and compared in terms of working process, input datasets, and simulation results. 

The final outcome of the EPC RECAST reveals a series of recommendations regarding the EPBD, which are as follows: developing standardised digital models to facilitate data ecosystems, ensuring compatibility between data platforms and national EPBD implementations, promoting the adoption of digital tools for efficient data collection, improving the accuracy of EPC assessments through high-quality metered consumption and climate data, encouraging calibration procedures to enhance reliability, optimising the cost balance between EPCs, Building Renovation Passports (BRPs), and energy audits, maximising the information provided in EPCs for their price, defining minimum software interface requirements for BRPs, leveraging synergies between EPBD Articles 9 and 12 for strategic planning, and establishing digital logbooks as central hubs for regulatory tools.