Professor urges Korea to reform building energy evaluation for new tech
Emeritus Professor Hong Hee-ki highlights that Korea's ECO2 building energy evaluation program, crucial for Zero Energy Building (ZEB) certification, fails to adequately reflect advanced energy-saving and renewable technologies, hindering their market adoption.
Our take
Will Korea's zero energy building certification start rewarding new on-site energy technologies such as PVT?
New on-site energy technologies in Korean buildings will stay hard to sell until the ECO2 evaluation tool behind zero energy building certification counts their savings, which remains a professor's proposal rather than a government plan.
Korea already has a review route for alternative calculation methods, but the author says it is not open enough for developers to use. The deciding step is whether the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport writes that route, with deadlines, into the certification notice.
What the source says
- ZEB industry forum The ZEB industry forum in 2023 criticized ECO2's insufficient reflection of new technologies and proposed activating the review system.
- Korea established the world's first national standard, KS B 8297, for PVT module performance evaluation in 2025.
- Desiccant dehumidification cooling has over 500 commercial installations in Korea, demonstrating its commercialization beyond the pilot stage.
- France France uses the 'Titre V' procedure to reflect innovative technologies not covered by existing regulations in its building energy evaluations.
- United Kingdom The UK registers verified product performance data in its SAP product database for building energy evaluation.
- Germany Germany sets calculation methods via standard DIN V 18599, with multiple private software programs implementing it to foster competition.
- United Kingdom, United States The UK and US utilize multiple verified programs for certification, where the government manages rules and verification, and the market handles implementation and improvement.
- The author recommends the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport clearly specify the review application procedure, responsible agency, and scope in the ZEB certification criteria notification.
- The author recommends specifying test and demonstration data and verification criteria for each technology in the ZEB certification criteria notification.
- The author recommends specifying processing deadlines and public disclosure of review results for new technologies in the ZEB certification criteria notification.
- The author recommends establishing a permanent review system involving industry, academia, and research experts for new technologies in ZEB certification.
- The author warns that Korea, despite being the first to create a PVT standard, risks falling behind in its adoption due to evaluation program limitations.
For investors — Investors in PVT and other building energy technology suppliers should check whether a product is credited in the ECO2 calculation before counting on zero energy building demand.
Watch: An official announcement by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport regarding reforms to the ECO2 new technology review process or ZEB certification criteria.
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