ORCID

Abstract

Non-residential buildings account for a significant share of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions across the EU, yet evidence-based policy development remains hindered by fragmented and non-interoperable building data systems. This study evaluates the suitability of publicly available electronic datasets for characterising Ireland’s non-residential building stock and supporting bottom-up energy modelling in the context of the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD 2024/1275/EU).A systematic scoping review of national government and institutional datasets was conducted using an adapted PRISMA-ScR approach. The analysis identified the national Energy Performance Certificate database and GeoDirectory as the only datasets with sufficient scale and detail to support national non-residential stock analysis. However, substantial limitations were identified, including incompatibilities between economic activity classifications (NACE) and building energy typologies (NEAP), incomplete stock representation, and EPC-triggered sampling bias. Frequently transacted building categories such as retail and warehouses are over-represented, while public-sector, healthcare, recreational, and small service buildings remain under-represented.The findings demonstrate that the principal barrier to effective non-residential stock modelling in Ireland is not data availability, but deficiencies in data governance, interoperability, standardised building identifiers, and energy-relevant classification systems. Addressing these structural limitations will be critical for effective implementation of the EPBD and for developing reliable national building stock models. While focused on Ireland, the methodological approach and identified challenges are transferable to other EU member states.

Keywords

Commercial, Reference building, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), Building data governance, Building stock energy modelling, Articles 16 and 22, Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD)

Publication Date

2026-01-01

Publication Title

Energy and Buildings

Volume

367

Issue

117734

ISSN

0378-7788

Deposit Date

2026-06-17

Funding

This research was part funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, RD&D PREDICT project [Grant No. 23/RDD/1046} and the MaREI, the Research Ireland Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine [Grant No.: 12/RC/2303-P2]

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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