The energy performance of buildings directive was rewritten in 2024. The new text is called EPBD IV and carries the long designation Directive (EU) 2024/1275. For Swedish property owners it means three concrete things. Energy declarations get a new scale. Minimum energy performance requirements are introduced for the non-residential stock. And a new indicator starts measuring how smart the building is. It is called the Smart Readiness Indicator. The SRI. And it is well on its way to becoming a factor that affects both valuation and leasing.
We have followed this closely. Here is what you need to know, what the timeline looks like, and where the biggest lever sits for raising your building's score.
What the SRI measures
The Smart Readiness Indicator is an EU framework that gives a building a rating from class G up to class A. The rating is calculated from a catalogue of smart ready services that cover nine technical domains in the building. Heating, cooling, domestic hot water, ventilation, lighting, dynamic building envelope, electricity, electric vehicle charging, and monitoring and control.
Each service is assessed against seven criteria that describe what the smartness should actually deliver. Energy efficiency. Maintenance and fault prediction. Comfort. Convenience. Health and wellbeing. Information to occupants. Energy flexibility and storage.
That last criterion matters. It is where grid services, the battery and EV charging weigh the most. And it is where Swedish buildings are furthest behind today.
What the timeline looks like
The EPBD entered into force on 28 May 2024 and must be implemented in Swedish law by 29 May 2026 at the latest. Boverket is now working on the regulations and consultation responses were collected in spring 2026. Implementation will be slightly delayed but will be in place during the year.
A separate clock applies to the SRI. The European Commission must report by 30 June 2026 on how the member states' testing phases have gone. Based on that report the Commission decides by 30 June 2027 whether the SRI becomes mandatory. The most likely outcome is that large non-residential buildings with HVAC output above 290 kW are covered first. That means offices, shopping centres, industry and public buildings of a certain size.
In parallel, the requirement for building automation is being extended. Today it applies at 290 kW. From 31 December 2029 the threshold drops to 70 kW. That change alone pulls thousands of Swedish properties into the framework.
Why property owners should care already now
There are three reasons to act before the requirements become mandatory.
Valuation. Smart buildings generate measurably higher rents. PwC has seen levels 10 to 12 percent higher for modern properties with smart solutions and energy efficiency. Net operating income rises when the energy cost falls and fault-preventing control reduces maintenance. Higher net operating income lands directly in the valuation.
Leasing. Larger tenants with ESG reporting, taxonomy alignment or their own climate targets already require documentation of a building's performance today. The SRI gives a standardised language for it. Those with a high class can show it. Those with none at all will be asked anyway.
The energy declaration. The energy declaration gets a new class A0 from May 2026 and Swedish zero-emission buildings get a temporary definition. The SRI may be integrated into the energy declaration as a complementary rating. Several EU projects are now working on a joint EPC SRI certificate. Whoever has the infrastructure in place is ready when Boverket has made up its mind.
The fourth reason is more prosaic. The value of flexibility is highest now, when the grid is under the most pressure. Waiting three years means cutting revenue that is there to collect every month.
Where the score is actually won
Of the nine technical domains, three are where a commercial property can make the biggest difference to its score with a single investment.
- Electricity. Battery storage, solar and on-site generation. The ability to store, balance and deliver to the grid.
- EV charging. Smart charging, load balancing, bidirectional charging. Boverket's new charging requirements from 29 May 2026 pull this into the property anyway. Requirements on OCPP, interoperability and V2G readiness are direct SRI points.
- Monitoring and control. Telemetry, data collection, fault detection, automatic response to price signals and grid signals.
A single installation can move the building up in three of nine domains at once. That is unusual. Most other measures, such as a heat pump or a lighting upgrade, lift one or two domains.
On the impact criteria, energy flexibility and storage is what weighs the absolute most for a Swedish building. Sweden has large regional imbalances. SE3 and SE4 have structural capacity deficits. FCR-D, FFR and mFRR are procured markets with real money every month. A building that can bid capacity into those markets does not just score high on the SRI. It generates revenue at the same time.
The difference between meeting the requirement and winning the deal
You can climb the SRI with any battery. It is another thing to do it with a battery that also returns a profit. The difference lies in the control.
A battery that only shaves peaks for the property handles part of the score. A battery that also optimises across FCR-D, FFR, mFRR and spot arbitrage automatically around the clock handles all of it. And pays back its own investment at the same time.
The technical difference sits in four places.
- Data collection and logging. The SRI assessment does not only look at what the system can do. It looks at what it demonstrably does. Telemetry and reports become evidence.
- Open protocols. OCPP for chargers, Modbus for the battery, P1 for the meter. Closed systems score lower because they cannot be integrated.
- Real-time control. Static schedules are worth fewer points than dynamic optimisers that respond to price signals and grid frequency.
- Multi-market optimisation. A player that only bids into one market is exposed both to the score assessment and to lost revenue when prices move.
That is why we built our platform the way we did. The Zap Gateway connects existing and new assets regardless of manufacturer. The Arc platform runs the optimisation across several markets at once and logs every decision. You get both the SRI class and the return from the same installation.
What you can do already now
If you own or manage commercial property in Sweden, there are three concrete steps that cost nothing to start with.
- Take inventory. Which buildings in the portfolio have HVAC output above 290 kW today? They enter the framework first. Which pass 70 kW? They enter in 2029.
- Measure a baseline. Ask for a preliminary SRI assessment of your largest buildings. We do it free of charge for properties that pass our technical criteria. It gives you a starting point and a target.
- Run the numbers. Battery storage on your connection delivers an SRI uplift, a shaved peak charge and revenue from the ancillary services market. The three parts do not exclude each other. They add up. We finance, own and operate the battery if you want the benefit on your invoice without tying up capital. Or we operate the battery you own yourself and share the revenue with you.
Summary
The Smart Readiness Indicator is not another voluntary label that disappears. It is written into the EPBD, it will likely gain mandatory status from 2027 for large buildings, and it ties a building's intelligence to valuation, energy declaration and leasing. Property owners who wait lose both revenue and a positioning window.
The single biggest lever for raising the score is battery storage with multi-market optimisation, smart EV charging and a platform that logs proven flexibility. It is the same installation that lowers the demand charge and generates revenue from the ancillary services market.
