The mission of the community is to meet and share experiences and knowledge at European and national level and to ask and to provide support on the status, development and application of calculation procedures on the energy performance of buildings.
The prime focus is on methodologies that are fit for use within the context of national or regional buildings regulations (art. 3 of the EPBD).
The main target groups are national and European policy makers, (inter-)national standards writers, consulting engineers, manufacturers, and educational institutes.
The goal is to stimulate further harmonization of energy performance calculation procedures at European or global level, which will lead to more transparency and efficiency in the procedures and to better competitiveness of the parties involved. Having said that, national differences (climate, building tradition, occupancy, legal environment,..) and innovative techniques need to be taken into account as well.
The main application of these calculation procedures is to check compliance with minimum energy performance requirements and to classify the building in terms of energy quality and potential for improvement. A second important application is international comparison of the energy efficiency of buildings.
The community is facilitated in collaboration with the European CENSE project (sponsored by the IEE Programme). In CENSE, several experts active in research and standardization, in CEN and at national level, collaborate to provide guidance on the CEN standards to support the EPBD and to obtain feed back from the EU Member States and other stakeholders on good practice examples or obstacles related to the application and implementation of these procedures at national and/or regional level. Because the full implementation appears far from trivial, the main aim of CENSE is to come (ultimately early 2010) to recommendations for a "second generation" of European standards.