Directive (EU) 2024/1275, known as the recast EPBD or EPBD 2024, establishes 29 May 2026 as the deadline by which all EU Member States must complete transposition into national law. According to the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy, failure to meet this deadline exposes Member States to infringement proceedings. The directive repeals and replaces the previous EPBD versions (2010/31/EU and its 2018 amendments), with the overarching objective of achieving a fully decarbonised EU building stock before 2050. According to EUR-Lex, the text was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 8 May 2024 (reference DOUE-L-2024-80664), with entry into force on 28 May 2024. The obligations it introduces are phased across multiple deadlines extending to 2030, affecting new construction and existing buildings alike, across all EU Member States. | The regulatory architecture through which this directive must be implemented varies by country. In Spain, for instance, the directive interacts with the Technical Building Code (CTE), the Thermal Installations in Buildings Regulation (RITE), and the royal decrees governing energy certification. According to MITECO, the Spanish institutional page on building energy efficiency confirms that some measures within the directive were already aligned with existing Spanish regulations, whilst other obligations, particularly those relating to renovation passports and life cycle assessment, require additional regulatory development. This partial alignment is not unique to Spain; across the EU, Member States are at varying stages of incorporating the more technically demanding provisions of the directive into their national frameworks. | According to BUILD UP, the European Commission platform for building energy efficiency, an analysis published on implementation in Spain indicated that the country had achieved approximately 60 per cent adaptation around the time of the May 2026 transposition deadline. This figure means that a significant proportion of the technical and administrative obligations arising from the directive still required specific regulatory development or updating of existing national instruments. This is a practical reality with direct consequences for building owners, certifiers, and technical teams: energy certification procedures, minimum performance requirements, and building information systems may all be subject to regulatory modification in the months ahead. Engineering teams working with structured information management frameworks, such as those aligned with ISO 19650 for BIM management, are better positioned to anticipate and document these changes from project inception. | One of the most immediately operative changes introduced by EPBD 2024 concerns energy performance certificates (EPCs). According to BUILD UP, from 29 May 2026 all EPCs must use the mandatory A-to-G scale and the template model defined in Annex V of the directive. This harmonised format serves two purposes: it facilitates comparability of real estate assets across the EU, and it provides more actionable information on recommended improvement measures. In Spain, EPCs are currently governed by Royal Decree 390/2021, which already introduced the A-to-G scale. However, Directive (EU) 2024/1275 adds further requirements to EPC content, including information on the global warming potential of embodied carbon, the smart readiness indicator (SRI), and integration with the renovation passport. These elements require updating of inspection, calculation, and registration procedures managed by the autonomous communities, which hold competence over certification registries. For building typologies with intensive energy consumption, such as hospital and healthcare facilities or large educational estates, accurate modelling of the updated EPC indicators is particularly critical for meeting compliance deadlines and avoiding administrative penalties. | The renovation passport is one of the most substantial innovations of EPBD 2024. According to MITECO, the directive requires Member States to establish a renovation passport scheme based on Annex VIII of the directive, with a deadline of 29 May 2026. The renovation passport is a bespoke document describing a staged deep renovation roadmap for a specific building, with the objective of reaching the highest possible energy performance, ideally nearly zero-energy building (NZEB) standard or above. Unlike a standard EPC, the renovation passport is not a snapshot of current building performance. It is a structured plan of sequential interventions, each with energy saving estimates, approximate costs, and time priority. Its technical value lies in enabling phased investment planning, reducing the risk of stranded assets, and maximising access to funding instruments such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility. From a methodological standpoint, producing a rigorous renovation passport requires a detailed energy model of the existing building, improvement scenario analysis, embedded and operational carbon estimation, and coordination with regional certification registries. Digital twin engineering tools allow this foundational model to be constructed using real building data, enabling comparative simulations across different renovation pathways before any capital commitment is made. | EPBD 2024 also introduces specific obligations regarding solar energy integration in new buildings. According to MITECO, in guidance on Spanish implementation of the directive, all new public and non-residential buildings with a useful floor area exceeding 250 square metres must have solar installations in place before 31 December 2026, provided this is technically and economically feasible. This obligation extends progressively to other building categories in later phases. This requirement overlaps with provisions already present in the Spanish CTE DB HE (Basic Document on Energy Saving), which in its 2019 revision established minimum solar contribution requirements. EPBD 2024 raises that threshold and makes it binding to stricter timescales, treating solar energy as default infrastructure rather than an optional provision. For energy generation and distribution projects, this convergence between building regulation and energy regulation creates a more complex technical working environment requiring coordination across building services, structures, and planning consents. | The regulatory calendar of EPBD 2024 extends well beyond May 2026. According to BUILD UP, the first binding life cycle assessment (LCA) requirements will begin to apply to large buildings from 2028, extending to all new buildings in 2030. LCA in the context of EPBD measures the global warming potential across the full life cycle of a building, including construction materials, the operational phase, and demolition, expressed in kilograms of CO2 equivalent per square metre per year. This means that projects currently being designed for large floor areas must already incorporate LCA methodologies into their technical documentation in order to be compliant when these requirements enter into force. Integrating LCA within BIM models, following information management protocols such as those described in ISO 19650, is the most efficient means of ensuring that documentation remains coherent, traceable, and updatable across the life of the asset. This is especially relevant for large industrial and manufacturing facilities, where buildings combine high technical loading with floor areas that frequently exceed the thresholds triggering the most demanding obligations. | Additionally, according to the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy, Member States are required to submit their final national building renovation plans before 31 December 2026. These plans must quantify the existing building stock, set renovation targets by decade, and detail associated financing measures, providing the priority framework against which national and European funding calls will be aligned. | The overall compliance environment created by EPBD 2024, in combination with existing national instruments such as the CTE, the RITE, and energy audit decrees, involves multiple active deadlines running simultaneously. Several practical implications follow directly from this framework. Energy performance certificates issued before May 2026 may require revision if they do not comply with the Annex V format, particularly in property transactions occurring after that date. Building owners with renovation plans should assess whether requesting a renovation passport is preferable to undertaking isolated measures, given that the passport may be a prerequisite for accessing certain public financing lines. New-build projects exceeding 250 square metres in public or non-residential use must assess the technical and economic feasibility of solar installation from the concept design stage, with adequate documentation of any applicable exceptions. Engineering teams working on large buildings should now incorporate LCA procedures into their workflows in preparation for the 2028 requirements. Energy audits conducted under national transpositions of the Energy Efficiency Directive must be consistent with the new EPBD 2024 indicators, in particular the global warming potential and the smart readiness indicator. | NOVTRIQ supports building owners, developers, and technical teams in navigating this evolving regulatory landscape, from energy certification and renovation passport preparation through to BIM-integrated LCA and compliance documentation across EU and UK jurisdictions. For further information on how these requirements apply to specific building typologies or project phases, the NOVTRIQ Technical Team is available to assess your current position and define a compliance roadmap aligned with your deadlines and budget.