Building regulations - proposed changes to energy and environmental standards: SG response part 2 - onward review
Proposed changes to energy and environmental standards (determining the principles for a Scottish equivalent to the Passivhaus standard) within Scottish building regulations. Part 2 of the Scottish Government response and next steps following analysis of the responses to the proposals set out in the July 2024 consultation.
2 Consultation section 2 – Defining a Scottish equivalent to the Passivhaus standard
2.1 Identifying the components of an equivalent standard
Consultation questions 1 and 2 asked respondents if they broadly agreed with a range of statements on what ‘equivalent’ should not mean and what ‘equivalent’ should require consideration of, in delivery of amended building standards to address energy and environmental performance.
There was agreement that ‘equivalent’ should not necessarily mean that Passivhaus is adopted and implemented for all new developments or that standards must consistently achieve built outcomes at least as good as Passivhaus.
We can confirm that the new standard will not mandate for all new buildings to be fully Passivhaus certified or for certified Passivhaus products to be used. We will however take action to recognise fully certified Passivhaus buildings as an alternative means of compliance with standard 6.1 of the building regulations – see section 3.5.
There was disagreement that ‘equivalent’ should not necessarily mean a standard is set that requires a similar level of prescription on key energy-relevant elements of building specification.
Response to this feedback is captured elsewhere in this document, particularly within sections 3.2 and 3.3 and in section 7 ‘Next steps’, which provides a summary of the actions to deliver a Scottish equivalent to the Passivhaus standard.
There was agreement with the majority of the statements on what ‘equivalent’ should require consideration of, however, there was disagreement that there should be an understanding of differences in outcome due to the application of our respective processes, including chosen calculation methodologies, with respondents generally feeling that compliance methodologies should produce consistent outcomes and the outcomes should match in-use performance. Sections 3.1 and 7 provide further information on this aspect.
Contact
Email: buildingstandards@gov.scot