On the quality and impact of residential energy performance certificates

Applying regression analyses we find that firm and expert characteristics matter quite a lot implying that the EPC-quality could be improved considerably by increasing the inter-rater reliability. The results also show that the price impact of the energy label is related to information that the buyers can obtain by visiting the house rather than to information uniquely provided by the EPCs. Hence, the EPCs per se are unlikely to stimulate energy conservation through the price mechanism.