Energy performance certificate in Germany: types, duty, costs and deadlines at a glance

You have inherited a house, want to let a flat or are thinking of selling — and come across the word Energieausweis for the first time. This article is written for owners who have never had to deal with the subject before and now want to know what the document says, whether they need one at all and what is coming their way.

We take it in order: what the certificate contains, which of the two certificate types is permitted for your building, when the duty applies at all, how to read the figures and the efficiency class, what the certificate costs, how long it is valid, how issuing works — and what changes on 1 January 2027. For the individual questions we refer you to the detailed article in each case.

#What is an energy performance certificate — and what does it contain?

An energy performance certificate (Energieausweis) is an information document about the energy characteristics of a building. The Act says so with unusual clarity: energy performance certificates “serve exclusively to provide information on the energy characteristics of a building and are intended to enable a rough comparison of buildings” (§ 79 (1) of the Building Modernisation Act, Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz).2 Two words in that sentence matter: exclusively and rough. The certificate is neither an expert report nor a consumption forecast, and it does not oblige you to carry out a single building measure.

A note on the name you will meet when looking things up: since 29 July 2026 the Building Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz, GEG) has been called the Building Modernisation Act, GModG for short. The title was renamed; the section numbers on the energy performance certificate have stayed the same. We write GModG throughout; wherever you still read “GEG”, the same Act is meant.

The certificate is issued for the whole building — that is what § 79 (2) sentence 1 GModG says.2 The competent federal institute puts it like this: “Energy performance certificates are, as a rule, issued for an entire building; energy performance certificates for individual flats or other units of use within buildings are not provided for.”11 Anyone selling or letting an owner-occupied flat (Eigentumswohnung) therefore does not need a separate certificate for the flat but the one for the building — which the owners’ association or the property manager provides. One exception applies today to mixed-use buildings: residential and non-residential parts are treated separately under § 106 GModG and thus like two buildings, which can mean two certificates.

#The five pages and what is on them

What an energy performance certificate looks like is not left to the issuer. Under § 85 (8) GModG the official templates are binding; they come from the notice of 1 December 2023 and have five pages.14 Two of them are mutually exclusive — depending on the certificate type, either page 2 or page 3 stays blank.

Which details must be included as a minimum is listed by § 85 (1) GModG in nineteen points.5 They include the expiry date, the registration number, the address, the building type, the year of construction of the building and the year of construction of the heat generator, the number of flats, the usable floor area, the main energy sources for heating and hot water, the type of ventilation and of any cooling, the occasion for issuing, whether the owner or the issuer collected the data, and the name, address, professional title and signature of the issuer.

Page 4 is the one that gives rise to the most misunderstandings. It contains modernisation recommendations — brief technical pointers from the issuer under § 84 GModG, unless the technical assessment shows that such measures are not possible. They are not binding. The consumer advice centre (Verbraucherzentrale) makes that explicit: the certificate documents the current energy condition, “but it does not oblige owners to implement the suggestions for improving the energy characteristics”.15

#Consumption or demand certificate: which one applies to your building?

Germany has two kinds of certificate side by side — the so-called dual system, which according to the BBSR is meant to do justice “on the one hand to the required, best possible description of the building’s energy condition and on the other to a reasonable financial and administrative effort”.11 The demand certificate (Bedarfsausweis) under § 81 GModG calculates from the building fabric and the building services under standardised boundary conditions for climate and use. The building fabric is captured in one figure per building element — the U-value. The consumption certificate (Verbrauchsausweis) under § 82 GModG works back from actual bills; the heating share is weather-adjusted.4

The choice is not always free. For residential buildings with fewer than five flats whose building application was filed before 1 November 1977, § 80 (3) GModG prescribes a demand certificate — unless the building already met the requirement level of the Thermal Insulation Ordinance (Wärmeschutzverordnung) of 1977 on completion or was brought up to it by later alterations.3 And without a data basis the consumption certificate does not work anyway: the basis must be bills from a continuous period of 36 months, the most recent billing period of which may not be more than 18 months old.

Which type is permitted for your building, when you may choose freely and what the two figures mean in practice is set out in detail in the comparison consumption or demand certificate.

#Who needs an energy performance certificate — and who does not?

The duty does not attach to ownership but to the occasion. That is the point at which most unnecessary expense can be avoided. The Act knows four triggers, and they are all in § 80 GModG.3 They are the construction of a building, alterations within the meaning of § 36 for which the whole building is recalculated, sale, creation of a heritable building right, letting, leasing and leasing arrangements, and the duty to display for buildings with heavy public traffic — from more than 250 square metres of usable floor area for public-authority use, otherwise from more than 500.

From this follows the converse that saves many phone calls: anyone who lives in their house themselves and neither sells nor newly lets it does not need an energy performance certificate. And even when selling or letting, no new one is needed as long as a valid certificate already exists for the building.

Only one case falls outside the certificate rules altogether: a small building, under the definitions a building with no more than 50 square metres of usable floor area (§ 3 no. 17).1 Under § 79 (4) sentence 1 GModG the provisions on the energy performance certificate do not apply to such a building at all.2 For a listed building the exemption does not reach as far as is often claimed: § 79 (4) sentence 2 exempts only from § 80 (3) to (7), that is from sale and letting, presenting, handing over and displaying.2 Anyone who constructs a listed building or alters it so extensively that the whole building is recalculated needs a certificate for that too. And the exemption has an expiry date: from 1 January 2027 the new version no longer mentions listed buildings — more on that further down.

When the duty applies in the individual case, which other exemptions there are and who has to fulfil it is clarified in the article on when an energy performance certificate is mandatory. The occasions at a glance — the duty to display for buildings with public traffic is described above:

#How do you read the figures and the efficiency scale?

On page 2 or 3 there are two figures that get confused although they measure different things.

For classifying the building only the first of the two counts: “The energy efficiency classes under Annex 10 follow directly from the final energy consumption or final energy demand” (§ 86 (2) GModG).6 A house with a pellet boiler can therefore have a good primary energy value and still a mediocre class if the insulation is poor. How the primary energy factor produces the second figure and which of the two belongs in the advertisement from 2027 is explained in primary energy demand and final energy demand: what separates the two figures.

The nine classes and their upper limits are unchanged in Annex 10 to the Act.9

The unit behind it is the second stumbling block. The reference area is not the living space but the usable floor area (Gebäudenutzfläche) — the entire heated or cooled floor area, which is stated on page 1 of the certificate and is usually larger than the living space. If it is not known, it may be estimated under § 82 (2) GModG: for residential buildings with up to two dwellings and a heated basement at 1.35 times, for other residential buildings at 1.2 times the living space.4 Anyone who compares the figure from the certificate with their own calculation per square metre of living space is comparing two different quantities.

That leaves the question that occupies everyone first: is my value good? Reliable reference points are given by the Verbraucherzentrale. A typical new building is described as 30 to 40 kilowatt-hours per square metre and year and is thus in class A. “The average residential building in Germany has a demand of around 150 kilowatt-hours per square metre per year and is thus in class E on the colour scale.” Unrenovated detached houses typically lie above 200 kilowatt-hours and thus in class G or H; multi-family houses are on average in class E.15

#Why the figure does not match your heating bill

Almost everyone at some point compares the value from the certificate with their own bill — and is surprised. The discrepancy is the normal case, not the error, and it has three understandable reasons.

First, the reference area. The certificate calculates per square metre of usable floor area, your bill per square metre of living space. This difference alone shifts the result noticeably without anyone having calculated wrongly.

Second, the standard boundary conditions. The demand certificate calculates with standardised occupant behaviour. The Verbraucherzentrale quantifies the sensitivity: “For a demand certificate, the calculation method assumes an average room temperature of 20 degrees Celsius; every degree above that increases energy consumption by around 6 per cent.”15 Anyone who permanently heats warmer than the assumed 20 degrees consumes correspondingly more — without anything about the building being different.

Third, the weather adjustment. In the consumption certificate the final energy consumption for heating must be weather-adjusted under § 82 (3) GModG: the actual consumption is converted via climate factors to a nationally uniform standard. A mild winter at your own location thus disappears from the figure — that is precisely the purpose, because otherwise two houses in different regions would not be comparable.

In practical terms: the figure in the certificate is a yardstick for comparing buildings, not a forecast of your next heating bill. For the question “what do I pay” the bill is the right source; for the question “how does my house stand” the certificate.

#What does an energy performance certificate cost?

The price depends on two things: the certificate type and the effort of collecting the data. “Consumption certificates are usually cheaper than demand certificates because the effort of data collection is lower for them,” writes the Verbraucherzentrale — adding that in the individual case it depends on the complexity of the building: on size, building elements, heating system and the available building documents.16

As a market observation, not an official figure: simple consumption certificates are, according to the same source (as of October 2025), “in some cases already available for just under 100 euros”. What the Verbraucherzentrale measures a certificate without a site visit by, however, is not the price but the data collection: check and compare offers carefully, do not be put off by an extensive questionnaire, supply meaningful photographs of the building — “even without an on-site inspection it is important that the data supplied has been determined correctly”.16 With us the consumption certificate for a residential building costs 69.90 €, the demand certificate 119.90 €.

What rarely appears in this calculation: a site visit is not legally required, but it drives up the price because travel and surveying the building are working time. Conversely it has a technical value — more on that below.

What the individual items amount to, where the ranges come from and who bears the costs is worked out in the article on what an energy performance certificate costs.

#How long is it valid, and when do you need a new one?

“An energy performance certificate is to be issued for a period of validity of ten years,” says § 79 (3) GModG.2 What counts is the date of issue, not the date of sale or letting; the expiry date is a mandatory detail on page 1. There is no extension — after ten years a new certificate is issued as soon as an occasion arises again.

The ten years are, however, an upper limit, not a promise. The same subsection provides: irrespective of the period, the certificate loses its validity if a new one becomes necessary under § 80 (2) — that is, if you alter the building so extensively that it is recalculated as a whole.

Conversely: an individual measure does not trigger a new certificate. New windows, an insulated basement ceiling, a heating replacement — as long as the whole building is not recalculated in the process, the existing certificate remains valid. A new one can still make sense: it shows the improved class, and that later appears in every property advertisement.

#How does issuing work — and who is allowed to issue it?

The route to the certificate is the same in all variants: collect data, check, calculate, register, issue.

For the data basis the Act divides the responsibility. If the owner provides the data, under § 83 (3) GModG they must ensure that it is correct1; for the data determined by the issuer, the issuer is liable. Both are subject to fines — so what you write in the form comes back to you.

Not everyone may issue the certificate. § 88 (1) GModG names five authorised groups: persons entitled under state law to provide proof of compliance, graduates of certain fields of study such as architecture, civil engineering, building services engineering or building physics, master craftsmen of the relevant trades and of the chimney sweep trade, state-recognised or state-certified technicians — and since 29 July 2026 additionally anyone who under state law may issue the declaration of compliance under § 92. This fifth group was only added with the Building Modernisation Act.13 For groups two to four one of three further conditions applies: a training focus on energy-saving construction or, after a degree without that focus, two years of relevant professional experience, successful training under Annex 11, or public appointment as an expert. Anyone who has passed the energy consulting qualification examination of the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) is also authorised under § 88 (5) GModG.7

Little known and practically important: there is no official licence. The BBSR writes that for the authorisation to issue “no separate examination or certification (by an authority or third parties) is prescribed”; the issuer is themselves responsible for issuing only within the scope of their qualification, and a breach is a regulatory offence subject to a fine.12 The Verbraucherzentrale says the same more briefly: “There is, however, no official certificate of authorisation.”16 Anyone who issues without authorisation risks a fine of up to 10,000 euros under § 108 GModG.

The registration number is therefore more than a formality: through it the federal states can spot-check certificates. On your side it is the simplest mark of authenticity — if it is missing, the document is incomplete.

And one more point from the same source that carries weight for the demand certificate: recording the building data correctly is hardly possible for non-experts, “we therefore recommend that a demand certificate should only be issued if the professional has inspected the building on site”.16 For the consumption certificate, which calculates from bills, this objection carries much less weight.

#What changes from 1 January 2027?

The Act governing the energy performance certificate was amended in summer 2026. The amendment was promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette on 28 July 2026; the provisions on the energy performance certificate are in Article 2 and, under Article 9 (2), only enter into force on 1 January 2027.10 Until then everything above continues to apply unchanged — the consolidated online version of the Act expressly marks the amendment by Article 2 as “not yet incorporated”.1

Five points matter for owners of a residential building.

The certificate goes digital. In future it must be issued digitally in a machine-readable format; a paper version is only available at the express request of the building owner or proprietor.

It carries more details — but fewer additional ones than the numbers suggest. The new § 85 (1) lists thirty-one mandatory details in a single list. Today, by contrast, § 85 spreads its catalogue over three subsections: twenty numbers for every certificate, of which number 15 has been dropped since July 2026, plus nine more for the demand certificate and six for the consumption certificate. A demand certificate today therefore already carries twenty-eight mandatory details — so it is mainly a restructuring, not an increase. New are, among other things, the efficiency class in every certificate, primary and final energy additionally as an absolute annual quantity, the share of renewable energy generated at the building site and the operational greenhouse gas emissions per square metre and year.10

The choice of certificate type becomes free for residential buildings. The rule that forces small older buildings with a building application before 1 November 1977 into a demand certificate is dropped without replacement. Conversely, the consumption certificate is narrowed to buildings used exclusively for residential purposes — for non-residential buildings, consumption certificates are no longer provided for from 2027.13 At the same time the recording period for the consumption certificate falls from 36 months to two years, separated by energy source per year.

Occasions are added, others fall away. In future the extension of a tenancy, lease or leasing contract is expressly covered too. The area thresholds of 250 and 500 square metres for the duty to display are dropped; it then attaches only to non-residential buildings with heavy public traffic.10 And the exemption for listed buildings disappears: anyone selling or letting a listed house needs a certificate from 2027 as well.

The A to G scale does not affect homes. This is the point on which a lot of wrong information is currently circulating. The scale from A to G is introduced on 1 January 2027 — but in Germany exclusively for non-residential buildings, via a new Annex 10a.13 For residential buildings Annex 10 remains, and with it the nine classes A+ to H; nothing changes in the threshold values of the table. The reference quantity is, however, redefined — from 2027 it is the usable floor area under DIN/TS 18599:2025-10 — and because the denominator can therefore be smaller in the individual case, the stated figure shifts.10 So your detached house will still be placed in the same classes after 2027 as today.

What a certificate will look like in detail from 2027, by contrast, is not yet settled: the binding new templates under § 85 GModG had not been published in the Federal Gazette at the time of going to press.14 Anyone who sees an illustration of the future certificate today is looking at a guess.

#Frequently asked questions about the energy performance certificate

#Conclusion: a document about the building, not a verdict on you

The energy performance certificate describes how a building stands in energy terms — it wants no more than that, and no more may be expected of it. It is issued for the whole house, is valid for ten years and is only needed when an occasion triggers it. Which of the two certificate types is permitted for your building is decided not by the price but by year of construction, size and data situation. And if you take one figure away from the certificate, let it be the final energy per square metre of usable floor area: the efficiency class hangs on it, and it does not change in 2027 either.