THE LEASE REQUIRED A 4 STAR NABERS RATING. THE METERING COULD NOT PROVE IT.
Posted on: April 8, 2026
NABERS
Office performance
The Lease Required a 4 Star NABERS Rating.
The Metering Could Not Prove It.
The building performed well. The metering boundary was not configured to demonstrate it. One deployment later, the assessment came back at 4.2 stars. NABERS UK energy ratings depend on measured operational data, not estimates.
NABERS UK rates a building’s actual operational energy performance rather than its design intent. A 4 star rating requires a measured energy use intensity of approximately 100 to 130 kWh per m² per year, verified against twelve months of metered consumption data. Estimates do not count.
When Callum, an asset manager at a London real estate fund, inherited a recently refurbished 8,500 m² Grade A office in the City, the NABERS commitment was already written into the headline lease with the anchor tenant.
The problem was that despite the refurbishment, the building’s metering infrastructure had not been set up to produce the consumption boundary required for a valid assessment.
Whole building electricity was captured. Tenant sub metering was partially in place. Landlord controlled common areas and plant were not separately metered.
Without a clean landlord energy boundary, the NABERS assessor could not produce a defensible rating.
Monitor Hut designed and deployed a metering strategy specifically structured around the NABERS landlord boundary. Electricity monitoring was configured across landlord controlled circuits including reception, plant room, lifts, common area lighting, and roof plant. Virtual meters were created to aggregate the boundary correctly and exclude tenant consumption. Half hourly data flowed continuously across all monitored points for the full twelve month assessment period.
NABERS UK ratings are only as good as the metering behind them. A building can perform well and still fail an assessment if the data boundary is not right.