Melville Rodrigues urges commercial landlords and tenants to implement new UK government guidance on energy data sharing
The UK must materially reduce both operational and embodied carbon from buildings to meet its COP commitments. The built environment – responsible for 25% of UK emissions – is therefore in the frame for action.
To act, we require reliable, standardised energy‑consumption data. This enables us to regulate, benchmark and facilitate decarbonisation across the built environment – an essential part of emissions reduction.
For commercial buildings, data sharing can usefully be facilitated by the rollout of smart meters. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has just announced that, from 1 September 2027, supplier fixed-term energy contracts with SME users will require an upgrade to smart meters if they do not already have them.
The DESNZ announcement helpfully includes policy guidance on how commercial landlords can cooperate with commercial tenants to share smart energy meter data, including support for decarbonisation of their premises. Hopefully, landlords and their tenants (especially those supporting sustainability goals) will recognise the benefit of collaboratively sharing their smart meter data.
Such sharing means:
- collaboration to identify and action improvements to energy efficiency;
- monitoring and analysis of consumption patterns, to set appropriate targets and benchmarks;
- making informed decisions for retrofit and other decarbonisation efforts;
- accurately reporting the energy consumption and energy efficiency of their properties to meet reporting commitments.
As an advocate of ‘positive nudge-nudge’ landlord-tenant cooperation models, I encourage the market to embrace commercially consensual and operationally simple smart meter data sharing.
It is estimated that, across UK commercial real estate generally, a mere 10-20% of leases are ‘green leases’ in any formalised sense – despite the landlord lobby looking for tenants to enter into green leases over the past 15 to 17 years. The proportion is rising in prime office markets, but the UK‑wide picture remains that most leases still contain no structured sustainability provisions.
Moreover, the real estate industry’s request for data sharing mandation (like Décret Tertiaire French legislation) is becoming less politically likely to be progressed in the UK. The DESNZ announcement indicates that the government does not agree that commercial tenants should be mandated to provide their landlords with access to smart meter data. The sustainability policy agenda is also experiencing headwinds: regulatory fatigue, cost‑of‑living politics and a shift towards ‘pro‑growth, anti‑regulatory burden’ positioning.
- help make commercial buildings cleaner, more efficient and more affordable to heat and run;
- record electricity and gas consumption as regular intervals, generating valuable data about organisations’ energy consumption that they can use to become more efficient and drive down costs.
Landlords and tenants can adopt various straightforward options for sharing data. For example, one practicable solution is for the landlord to access smart meter data directly from the tenant’s energy supplier. The tenant must provide prior agreement, perhaps uploading a signed authorisation with the supplier. In the lease (including a green-lease scenario) there usefully could be light-touch smart meter data sharing provisions.
The parties should, of course, consider confidentiality and other sensitivities when agreeing smart meter data sharing with tenants. In this context, DESNZ has stated: “In most cases, smart meter data from a commercial tenant is unlikely to be personal data under the UK GDPR, since the data is unlikely to relate to an identifiable individual.” In addition, landlords may consider using the ‘legitimate interests’ basis for processing a commercial tenant’s smart meter data.
The guidance represents a win-win-win for tenants and their landlords as well as enhancing the prospects of urgently needed decarbonisation of our UK built environment. I urge speedy delivery as smart meters are rolled out.
