 and a lot of insights that are coming through there and based on your extensive experience in terms of the scoring and the grading of these buildings and the energy consumption thereof, what are some of those solutions that property investors can implement you know in order for them to maintain a favorable rating and for them to get to having a very good rating in terms of their APC. Don't have an APC? You could face 5 million grand fine or even worse jail time. Are you worried whether your building is green enough or you should be? In this episode our expert guest will help you understand the ins and outs of the energy performance certificates from the expert's mouth to your ears. These are property insights you don't want to miss. This is the Private Property Podcast. I'm Dummi. Welcome. Join the conversation tonight on Facebook by dropping your comments below and you could stand a chance to win 500 grand cash. See competition details in the description. All this without wearing a cape. That's quite a task there, Freaky. Viewers at home, help me give a warm welcome to the head of sustainability at Remote Metering Solutions, Freaky Malan. Freaky, good evening and thank you so much for joining us. Timmy, thank you for inviting me to participate in the show. I'm really looking forward to tonight and to discuss the latest or one of the trending topics in the energy space energy performance certification for buildings. Thank you so much. You know, really, really appreciate it. Jumping straight in. Is it true that without an APC one could face 5 million grand fine or even jail time? To me, there is sort of some, how can I say, validity in that statement, but we've got to unpack it a little bit. The first thing to understand is that not all buildings need an APC. In terms of the regulations that were published in December 2020, only four occupancy classes of buildings need APCs. So these are your G1 offices. A1, the A1 occupancy class, which is places of entertainment and public assembly. A2, which is theatrical and indoor sports. So it's places where people would gather to watch indoor sports or theatrical performances. And A3, which is places of instruction like colleges and schools and universities. So for instance, home owners don't belong to any of those occupancy classes and they don't need to have an APC on their houses. If you're a property owner and you own a shopping center, a shopping center is also not one of those four listed occupancy classes. So unless your building belongs to one of those four occupancy classes, that's one of the criteria to decide whether you need an APC. And the other one is the building size. So if your building is owned by a private owner, then the building must be larger than 2000 square meters. If it's owned or occupied or operated by what is referred to as an organ of state, then that size threshold is 1000 square meters. So it's interesting that in a government owned buildings, the size threshold is actually smaller than private owned buildings. So generally speaking, by all accounts, estimates, sort of general consensus in the market, there's between 200,000 and 300,000 buildings in South Africa that do need an APC. And it's worth mentioning that the deadline for achieving your compliance with the APC regulations is actually this December, December 2022. So there's not a lot of time left to get your APC if you don't have one yet. And if you obviously belong, if your building belongs to those occupancy classes and if it's larger than the 2000 square meters. Sure. Someone is already watching us tonight and maybe as a property investor or even belongs to that category that you mentioned, but is still wondering what is an APC and how do I obtain it? You know, let's just delve into what it is and what it entails and how does one obtain it if they already have a building that sits in one of those categories. Okay, so I'm going to just go back to my one of my opening remarks where I said it, where I mentioned that there were regulations published in 2020 that effectively brought APCs into law. So it is legislated and in a non-compliance with the regulations means that you are transgressing the National Energy Act, which then could lead to the fines, which was your first question. So effectively, what is an APC? It is a piece of paper. It's a simple answer with a writing on it from A to G, where A is a very efficient building and G is a building that's not terribly efficient. I think the closest analogy is if you look at these days if you buy a fridge or a washing machine or whatever, most of them have these stickers on the side that also has this rating that is an indication of the energy efficiency of that appliance. Now an APC is pretty much that same kind of sticker if you want that is applied to a building. So an A, like I said, denotes a building that is very energy efficient and a G would be a building that's not efficient. The middle range is more or less a D. So what that means is an APC is calculated by determining the total energy consumption of a building over a 12-month period. That is typically called the year of assessment and that is that total kilowatt-hour energy consumption is then normalized by the building size. So in other words, you just divide the total energy consumption by the building size. Obviously larger buildings will consume more energy than smaller buildings and that answer that you get is compared to a national standard. It sounds 10, 400 XA. There's a 2011 version and a more recent 2021 version and depending on how your building stacks up against that reference consumption gives you the A or the B or the C or the D or whatever rating your building gets. It's also useful maybe to mention that an APC is valid for a period of five years. So once you have an APC for your building you only need to revisit that building's performance and the APC of the five years. Thank you so much for that and a lot of insights that are coming through there and based on your extensive experience in terms of the scoring and the grading of these buildings and the energy consumption thereof what are some of those solutions that property investors can implement in order for them to maintain a favorable rating and for them to get to having a very good rating in terms of their APC. So I'm going to try not to get too technical because it's easy to go into something to add an engineering rabbit hole to but I think you know let's start at the type of buildings that qualify for APCs and I think you know in our experience at least in the market that we're targeting most of the buildings that we have done APCs for are the office type building near your commercial buildings and in those buildings your major energy consumers are typically your lighting and your air conditioning systems. So if you want to improve the performance of your building from an APC point of view you have to look at how can you reduce the energy consumption that is associated with either your lighting or your air conditioning systems in the building and there's a host of called energy efficiency interventions that a property owner can consider. I think the key is what do you do to improve the building's performance that still gives you a good return on investment and that's not always simple and you know I think any property owner who wishes to improve the portfolio or the performance of his building or his portfolio would do well to appoint a call it an energy efficiency subject matter expert to help him on this journey. One thing that I do want to mention is sort of a common assumption in the market that if you put solar PV on a building which most people are doing these days for for many reasons not just efficiency I think with load shedding being what it is most people are looking at some kind of solution that will give them electricity when well when when ESCOM is when we're in a state of load shedding. So the common misconception is that if I put solar PV on my building my APC rating will improve but that's not correct because an APC looks at the total energy consumption of a building it does not really from an APC point of view matter where the energy comes from whether it's from ESCOM whether it's from a diesel generator or whether it's from a solar PV plant it's still kilowatt hours so you know you can even take a building off grid it will still have the same APC rating that it would have received if it was still connected to the grid if the total amount of kilowatt hours were not reduced I hope that makes sense. No thank you so much for that yes and and it totally does in terms of what it is and how one can prepare for it so let's let's talk about let's talk more about the role that you are currently playing as the head of sustainability at the remote metering solution can you tell us a little bit more about that and what exactly you do. Yeah Timmy thank you so we're a new business unit within remote metering solutions and you know our mission is to help our clients to reduce their government footprint improve the efficiency of their facilities whether that's commercial or industrial but you know I think I used the word journey earlier and this kind of approach to really implement changes in a portfolio of buildings that are sustainable is a journey it's not a one-shot sort of silver bullet that can solve all your problems and and one of the most important steps in this journey is to understand where am I starting from what is my current situation and I think this is where EPC is also playing an important role because an EPC is really a benchmark of a building's performance and you know the question isn't really or it's not important whether a building is A or a B or a C whatever the rating is but the question to ask is rather how do you improve the rating what do you do to reduce the energy consumption of that building and this is where we help our clients to develop call it energy efficiency and renewable energy and sustainable sustainability plans that span more than one year it's not just about doing something this year and then you know your job is done it's what you do this year what you do the year thereafter and how do you put this program together in such a way that the return on investment on the one end and the environmental impact on the other end is is maximum no thank you so much for that freaky and let's let's jump into the factors that are considered when as a specialist comes into your building you are one of the people whose building is in the categories the four categories that you mentioned you're either school or college or even a sports facility a specialist is walking into my building what are the four factors that he or she is looking at in order for them to grade the to grade my energy consumption and which level of my EEPC's or how my APC is going to look rather okay so so when we determine the energy performance certification rating of a building there's a number of factors that we take into account the first is the total energy consumption of the building and I have to emphasize the word total so we look at all the energy sources that are being used in the building that would be your grid electricity and I think most people still rely on the grid your solar PV consumption if you have a solar PV plant on your roof we have to take into account how much diesel was consumed during that bold month year of assessment and again you know most buildings these days do have some form of diesel backup so that is quite an important energy source some buildings use gas and even though that's not usually a significant contributor to the total energy consumption we do have to take that into account the standards also make provisions for solid fuels so I'm glad to say that so far we haven't found any buildings that use coal and I hope we don't but that is always a possibility and then we also look at any we also have to take into account any energy that might leave the building so that's sort of a bit of a technical case but what I'm trying to say is the first factor is what is the net energy consumption of that building so it's all the energy that's been used in the building minus the energy that could for some reason or another leave the building then I think I mentioned that the energy consumption is normalized for the size of the building so there the standards referred to the net floor area which is a very specific definition of the size of a building so what we need to do that what we need from a property owner to determine the net floor area is his building plans which we then analyze and we determine the net floor area and then we also take into account things like what was the level of occupancy for the building now that's quite relevant given COVID and building occupancy rates were definitely down especially in the commercial sector so if you're yet of assessment power over the lockdown period then it's something that we that we do take into account and then you know just to sort of cross the T's and dot the I's we also look at the operating hours of the building you know the assumption for an office building for example is that the offices run 12 hours a day five days a week but let's say you have something like a call center that is operated 24 by 7 it is a factor that is going to influence the energy consumption and therefore the rating of the building and we do need to take that into account so I guess that that's sort of the big picture there's a lot of nitty gritty that I'm not getting into but in short we need to take into account all the energy consumption all the energy consumers in the building or sources of energy the net floor area and the building occupancy and then the operating hours and the operating conditions of the building sure if you just joined us we are talking e-pc certification and how you can ensure if you fall part of the categories that make that that require e-pc certificates to ensure that you don't get fined or even face jail time so if you have questions or comments do remember to send those to us so that freaky can deal with them before we let him go tonight freaky before before we start taking the questions on social media I just want to ask a question quickly in terms of how can we quantify the saving or we the the goal is to save energy and we we may we may know how much energy we have saved but can we then quantify it in terms of the the environment or how much carbon or carbon monoxide or even pollution that we are saving in a year or even in a couple of years will we be able to know or is this something that has been done in the industry to say we know how much how much we have saved and how much damage we have saved or prevented from doing these exercises yes yes indeed to me I think the notion of carbon footprinting for buildings well many types of buildings is quite well established and a lot of people are helping property owners understand their carbon footprint number one and also what if they take any measures to improve with that carbon to reduce the carbon footprint you know the the mechanisms and methods to report on that as well established and yeah so so the relationship between let's say the kilowatt hours that the building consumes the energy that the building consumes and this depends on the the source of energy and the carbon emissions associated with those kilowatt hours oh no so you know if a building's energy mix consists of you know grid electricity and diesel and solar PV the carbon footprint can be can be determined I think this is I mean I mentioned that solar PV and having sort of renewable energy mix doesn't effectively be seen but it would obviously have a massive impact on our carbon footprint because all the kilowatt hours coming from a solar PV plant really has zero carbon footprint so you know a building that has let's say 30 percent of its power coming through its electricity coming from so PV would have a lower carbon footprint and the same building that uses the same amount of kilowatt hours but it's all coming from the grid so these two buildings would have the same EPC rating but the building would have a much lower carbon footprint. Thank you so much for that Tricky and folks there you have it thank you so much for joining us tonight it was a really informative session and we really really co-appreciate you coming through and fielding those questions for us if anybody is in those category of of buildings or owns one I believe I bet you they are going to be implementing one of those EPCs thank you so much for joining us and have a good night. Thank you. Good night. So we are going to be taking a quick feature which is something new that I am sure you are absolutely going to love we are talking everything and everything energy we come to you bringing you fast facts about energy so tonight we are looking at these these particular fast facts energy efficient buildings have cleaner combustion and better ventilation than traditional buildings and energy efficient buildings reduce indoor air pollution they also minimize outdoor pollution by reducing the fossil fuel pollution caused by power generation because of because they use less energy our second five fast facts for tonight is that reducing indoor and outdoor air pollutants can reduce the occurrence of illnesses like asthma lung cancer as well as the rate of premature deaths our third fun fact building efficiency provides the most return on the investment in terms of reducing climate change and causing emissions in addition to lowering infrastructure costs and household expenses number four building efficiency improves regularly regularly have a low cost or provide return on investment in the form of energy cost savings in as little as six six months to a year this is an indirect contrast to emission cutting investments in other sectors such as agriculture transportation which are either pretty expensive or result in decreased emission reductions and number five building cons buildings consume 40 percent of global energy and emits 33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions making new builders making new buildings sustainable and energy efficient will be critical to our efforts to combat climate change employees bottom lines and investors can all benefit from green buildings that was our new fun fact hopefully hopefully you guys enjoyed that segment and i am going to be now telling you who won the most engagement for tonight's episode ladies and gentlemen put your hands together as we welcome glad shirinda who is the winner of tonight's 500 grand cash prize congratulations to you glad shirinda hopefully you'll tell us in the comments what you're going to do with your prize and that brings us to the end of our episode tonight thank you so much for joining us we were talking EPC tonight and if you are if you are in this this space and you are part of those categories hopefully you now know what you need to do to ensure that your buildings are efficient so the next time we see you right here on the private property podcast 7 p.m every weekday have a great night