"The EPC is Dead"

Feels a bit weird writing a headline like that when it's a direct quote from one of the largest EPC providers in the country. But brilliance isn't an option if you become contrite in failure, and David Sanders and his team have decided to flip the script. For them failure isn't an option.

We discovered some of the ground breaking work being done by David and the team from Vibrant Energy Matters at the Green Finance Institute summit that ended 2025. The summit is conducted under Chatham house rules, so you aren't, we aren't allowed to discuss some of the amazing conversations, presentation or discussions we witnessed. But we were allowed to snag interviews with attendees.

This is the first in a series. [sign up to get the next one if you haven't already - Ed.]

David is an unassuming character - you might call him humble, but if he was a rugby player he's the flanker that just tunnels through and tackles endlessly - but the weight of what he says is noteworthy. In fact, it is safe to say his opening pitch was a full frontal knock over.

A client his company are working with, a landlord with a sizeable portfolio of 200 year old properties were hit with hundreds of thousands of pounds of upgrades according to their latest EPC. But after working with David this changed. With the data his company has, the working relationships with service providers and a realistic, (we hate the word but it's true) 'holistic' approach- his team already projected a 70% saving in the retrofit bill.

That's stopped a landlord from divesting, and made them think of investing. Not just investment - this and other landlords are making properties more liveable, staying afloat and making real people's lives better. The keystone in the process for this client was the enhanced EPC service Vibrant uses, the Vibrant Energy Saving Audit or VESA - a product so good we featured it in our Sparks of 2026 hit list.

The Origin Story

Bought out by Countrywide, then in turn Connell's group, this nifty team of building experts could have just been absorbed into a giant corporate machine. But credit to the management team, this service didn't absorb, it transformed. Like a drift racer that discovers nitro for the first time.

Adopting the moniker Vibrant Energy Matters, the team went from delivering thousands of EPCs to a muscle machine with over a million data points from EPCs across the UK. This amount of exposure to the frailties of EPC evaluations made something change within the group. David said they got data hungry -

"We broadened our product portfolio to accommodate for anything compliance related for properties. So whether that be electrical safety checks, EICRs, gas safety checks."

When a major shareholder in Vibrant - is Skipton Building Society (the last count we did they handle 1 in 10 property transactions in the UK) and you're handling a nations worth of assessment data across every possible building archetype - you're sitting on a data gold mine. And you've got as David says, a very valuable tool -

"We've got not just the data, but a real understanding of how the RdSAP system works, how different recommendations and different measures can be applied to different property types."

This led to the development of an over arching drive for the group -

"Ultimately, we, as an organisation, want to make every home in Britain energy efficient, that's our mission statement."

Landlords - Relieving The Pain of an EPC

This isn't a fluff piece, and David isn't a fluffy kind of guy, so we needled him with a point that he'd raise at the summit and that was vital in the world of the 93% of private single property landlords being terrorised by EPC recommendations - which the National Resident Landlords Association is so worried about. Turns out, things are not just ok, they could be great.

In several cases, one in particular when a landlords retrofit bill went from £200,000 plus for his 18 properties to just £11,000 - we needed to understand how David and his team were doing this.

And it turns out, they do the legwork, have the suppliers and can rationalise the EPC recommendations. It's about who you know not just what you know.

It turned out that not just a few but hundreds of landlords are accessing well known white labelled retrofit tools, that are pricing in worst case scenario retrofit bills - for jobs that could be completed by local suppliers at a fraction of the cost, still compliant, but priced locally.

Added to that, there are solutions not covered by RdSAP/EPC categories, or not applied correctly, which when used correctly, dramatically improve the performance of buildings.

And that was the sweet spot that Vibrant Energy Matters swiftly filled, and that's why every single landlord in the UK, might just have a saviour at hand.

They have built a national network of suppliers who can accurately quote and project a retrofit solution that isn't speculative, and they can deliver with accredited providers (MCS, Flexi-Orb, NAPIT etc) but they keep the cost low by loading the fee to the supplier for the customers project. - How? Their suppliers reduce the fees because Vibrant Energy Matters is giving work to it's suppliers with CAC, Customer Acquisition Costs.

How does this benefit everyone involved?

Rather than charging the customer for advice, Vibrant Energy Matters flips the traditional retrofit cost stack on its head. Because they already sit at the top of the funnel through EPC and compliance work, they absorb the entire customer acquisition burden themselves: marketing, assessment, education, specification, and project packaging.

Installers receive work-ready jobs with zero sales, quoting, or marketing effort required.

In return, Vibrant charges suppliers a capped fee (typically up to 10 percent of project value), which replaces the installer’s own CAC. Crucially, Vibrant insists that this saving is passed directly back to the customer through lower quotes.

The result is a rare alignment of incentives: landlords and homeowners pay no premium for advice, installers win consistent work without chasing leads, and retrofit costs fall because speculative pricing and duplicated sales effort are stripped out of the system.

A Retrofit Taskforce - At The Top of The Funnel

What David and his team are doing, for consumers and landlords is chipping in at the very top of the decision making cycles, where decisions about retrofit and renewable energy resources are new. This means that they are first in line with information and accurate pricing that delivers proven, repeatable results.

When we interviewed the National Residential Landlords Association rep last year they spoke about the need for a 'national retrofit task force' and with consumer confidence low, and being dented by the constant greenlash trolling of online bots, David and his team offer a credible, national solution.

They have the financial heft, and most interestingly, they can use solutions that they have road tested, equipment, materials and processes that don't necessarily sit within existing frameworks. Because they already know that these solutions work. They have the data.

That's way beyond a competitive advantage, that's market leading innovation.

It's not just the scale of their workforce though, it's the reach, as David points out;

"So we've got 450 Domestic Energy Assessors across the country, and they work within the area that they live. Now that means that they know the property archetypes, they know the area, and they know that we're using this information to build retrofit plans. So that comes through in you know, some of that information comes through in the data."

The Engine Behind Retrofit - Code

The spiciest point in our interview came as David discussed the real engine behind a retrofit planning tool, we didn't even know existed.

That's because David's team built it themselves and no one else has.

Using the RdSAP data, SAP modelling, retrofit performance datapoints, CAC assessments, materials resourcing and a supply chain and quality control which is the envy of any government department. David's team did this.

They spent months, using all their data, and built a totally custom, proprietary coded 'retrofit brain'. Which is so powerful, it's being adopted by major brands in the housing sector.

It got spicy here, because I know you'd all want to know who's got access to this tool. But David cooled off our enthusiasm and just hinted. So all we can say is that they are high street brands, you all probably have accounts with them, and yes, this tool is going to work now, is working now and will be working for the future to achieve what Vibrant Energy Matters wants.

"To Make every home in Britain Energy Efficient".

The EPC is Dead - Long Live the EPC

Let's draw a line in the sand. It's too easy to go to conferences, attend retrofit sites and listen to EA, architect and consultant feedback that the EPC is dead. But the truth is we needed a start point to get Britain moving towards energy efficiency. And David is sanguine about what his company has achieved off the back of an imperfect system.

They might have started out as an EPC provider, but they are in the retrofit sector for the long term;

"We want to create a pathway for a customer that's frictionless, supported and independent so that they are making the right decisions for them and for their property."

And at the start of 2026, this is just the sort of spirit we need.