The Energy Performance Gap in Swiss residential buildings: a roadmap for improvement

This work deals with the Energy Performance Gap (EPG) in buildings, defined as the difference between actual and theoretical energy consumption. This paper investigates how to close the EPG of existing buildings in Switzerland, by which measures, until when, and at which costs. To address these questions an extensive literature review was conducted combined with qualitative interviews in order to better understand practitioners' experience and to support the findings from the literature. Several approaches have been found to reduce the EPG. These include both measures to make the building consume as expected and to arrive at a more accurate calculation of the theoretical consumption. We highlight the most relevant solutions for the Swiss context.