You have probably heard about the approval of Decreto 235/2013, which, as of June 1st, will make the energy certification of a building mandatory before its sale or rental. The professionals authorized to sign this certification are engineers, technical engineers, architects, and technical architects.
As you can see, the group of professionals who can perform it is extensive. Too extensive. Furthermore, being a sector heavily hit by the economic crisis, many professionals see energy efficiency as a potential field of work. On LinkedIn, groups for certification and energy efficiency have filled up, and energy efficiency companies are proliferating like mushrooms.
But, what is the real potential of the sector? Is there as much work as it seems? I’ll tell you the reality of the sector based on experience.
A Bit of History
First, let’s remember to have a global view of the sector. During the years 2002 to 2006, at the height of the construction boom, we all worked on project design and site supervision. Any recent graduate quickly found a job in a technical office. Self-employed professionals easily found projects to sign. There was abundance, variety, and good pay.
It wasn’t until 2007-2008 that the crisis began to be strongly felt. Urban infrastructure was the first to suffer. As no new urban land was being planned, the need for new services disappeared. We went from doing a low-voltage line project every week to it becoming a rare bird, an endangered species. It was one of the first indicators of what was to come.
This period, 2005 – 2007, coincides with the rise of renewable energies. It was common to calculate solar thermal systems for domestic hot water in homes, photovoltaic production installations, and the implementation of wind farms. With a bit of luck, you might even do a geothermal or mini-hydraulic project.
Many professionals began moving towards the field of renewables, drawn by rumors of abundant work. However, they arrived late. By the end of 2007, the renewable energy field also began to decline. Cuts in feed-in tariffs had eliminated the photovoltaic bubble, which finally burst in 2010. The housing crisis ended new construction, so the fields of geothermal and solar thermal installations for domestic hot water fell with it.
And Then Came Efficiency
At that time, the idea of energy efficiency began to gain strength in the sector. The idea, of course, was good. It aims to minimize energy consumption, so it acts on existing installations, something almost mandatory at a time when no new construction is happening. Furthermore, it seeks the client’s economic savings, which constitutes a powerful sales argument in times of crisis.
As always happens, the business opportunity was real in the early stages. Those of us lucky enough to enter in 2007 were able to conduct audits and certifications for buildings and municipalities. The market was never really very lucrative. The billing price was low relative to the time and cost required, at least if you wanted to do the job correctly. However, it allowed prescribing works for efficiency improvements and, having done the audit, it was very likely you would be awarded the renovation contract. This allowed, in many cases, to keep the ship afloat while the construction sector crumbled.
As time passed, it became harder to get new clients. By 2011, most municipalities had already done their energy audit, and the remaining ones were not interested in doing it. Similarly, most industries and tertiary commercial buildings, i.e., buildings with significant consumption, had already taken measures to reduce their consumption or had an audit done. Furthermore, available credit had been significantly reduced, so clients were reluctant to make investments, even with payback periods of 4 or 5 years. On the other hand, favoritism and shady commercial-political agreements of dubious legality spread. Even certain public institutions, such as universities and technology centers, began to carry out efficiency actions using public funds, even though it was legally incompatible.
Unaware of this reality, more and more professionals moved into the sector. Need, unemployment, and the hope of finding work led many technicians to join the market. It began to become difficult to visit a client without many others having visited before. Saturation caused prices to fall and with them, the quality of service. The market filled with “pirates” who offered miraculous savings without even having been to the audited installation. Need is a very bad advisor, and not all technicians exhibit the same technical judgment, nor do they equally defend the quality of their signature.
What’s to Come
My forecast for energy certifications is that they will become a real fight to sell at all costs, lowering prices and disregarding quality. Similar to what happened in its day with ITEs (Technical Building Inspections), it is a market exhausted even before exploitation begins. There will be “people” (I refuse to call them technicians) who will have a dossier with 20 or 25 pre-calculated models, and when given a job, they will look for the most similar one, photocopy and sign, certificate done without hardly visiting the property. They will invoice 150-175 €, barely enough to earn a decent salary.
The market is oversaturated, and a large part of the blame lies in the low qualification required to do an audit or a certificate. Anyone with a degree thinks they can do it. Let’s be honest, having bought a power logger and a thermal imaging camera or having taken a recycling course in efficiency and renewables does not make you an energy consultant. Just as having worked a year and a half in a project office does not make you a Project Manager, no matter how much you like to put it on your CV.
Objectively, executing a project for a house, urbanization, infrastructure, or building installations has much more demanding technical requirements than those required to perform an energy certification. This is a terrible mistake because if someone doesn’t know how to design an installation, or hasn’t physically seen a similar one, how can they be expected to know how to audit it. Doing an energy audit well is a complex job. It cannot be done with an 8-hour course, where the only one who really benefits is the one teaching the course.
Personally, I would require that to perform a certificate or an audit, one must have executed a project of similar characteristics and scope. This would put an end to unqualified practice in the sector. Unfortunately, since this is not the case, there will continue to be technicians who lower prices and give bad advice to their clients just to get the project. Without requirements and without responsibility, the door is open. If you add to this that clients, individuals, industries, and even municipalities, choose the cheapest technician without caring about the quality of the work performed, the tragedy is served.
My advice is that if you really want to work in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energies, you should aim for more demanding and elitist sectors than energy audits. Any “smart guy” can try to do a certificate poorly. But if, for example, the project involves designing and implementing automation within a significant building, not just anyone can enter there. Always aim for exclusive sectors, where the technical requirements weed out the less qualified.
