Benchmarktool for Flemish EPS-label

• Closely integrated into the woningpas
• Clean tool with a high user-friendliness
• Nice styling and correct branding

The Vlaams Energieagentschap (VEA) is an independent agency of the department Omgeving and implements a sustainable energy policy. The main tasks of VEA are to stimulate a rational use of energy and environmentally friendly energy production.

The challenge: benchmarking at a glance and tight integrations

VEA wanted citizens to be able to compare the energy performance of their homes. This way, VEA wanted to increase awareness and knowledge about the energy performance of all houses.

VEA therefore asked us to design a web application in which citizens can easily benchmark the energy performance of a home at regional, provincial, municipal and possibly even smaller levels. This benchmark would be based on an EPC label, analogous to how electrical appliances are labeled depending on how economical they are with energy.

This EPC label for homes had to be integrated within the VEA website energiesparen.be and in the woningpas, another VEA project that we helped to realize. In addition, stakeholders such as the construction and real estate sector and cities and municipalities had to be able to easily integrate this label into their websites.

Our solution: accessible and tailored to the citizen

After the first workshops between ACA and the project managers of VEA, it was clear that the target group was broader than just citizens who know the EPC code or label of their home. Citizens who don't know their prefix also want to be able to use the benchmark tool.

The prototypes created after these workshops also confirmed this. The benchmark tool guides users through a number of simple questions and then provides them with an indicative label that corresponds to their home. By directly testing with the end users, we were able to further refine this to suit the citizen.

In addition to an indicative EPC label, the benchmark tool also offers the possibility to positively influence the indicative label via various parameters. In this way, users can discover the impact of investments such as a heat pump or cavity wall insulation on their EPC label.