Is an old energy certificate still valid? The 2007, 2013 and 2018 certificates compared

The house is about to go on sale, and there is an energy certificate in the drawer. Will it do, or do you need a new one? And why would a new certificate perhaps give the house class D when the old paper said C? In this article we go through how to check whether an old certificate is still valid, what the years 2007, 2013 and 2018 on a certificate mean, and when it pays to order a new certificate before the old one expires. For what an energy certificate is in the first place, see the article what is an energy certificate.

The short answer: check the date of issue and add ten years

An energy certificate is valid until it is replaced by a new certificate, but for at most ten years from the date it was drawn up. The law has no other exceptions to the validity. Checking is therefore easy:

Find the date of issue on the certificate.
Add ten years to it.
If that date is still in the future, the certificate is valid – and can be used for a sale or a rental as it is.

The law requires a valid certificate for sales and rentals: it must be on display at viewings and handed over to the buyer or tenant. No rule requires a new certificate under the 2018 rules if the old one is still valid. If the certificate has expired, you need a new one before the property goes on the market. Which buildings need a certificate in the first place is covered in the article which buildings need an energy certificate.

The year tells you which rules the certificate was drawn up under

In sale and rental listings, the energy class letter is followed by a year in subscript, for example C₂₀₁₈ or D₂₀₁₃. The year is not the year the certificate was drawn up: it tells you under which regulations the class was calculated. There are three sets of regulations:

Marking in the listing	What it is based on	Still valid?
A₂₀₀₇–G₂₀₀₇	The old Energy Certificate Act 487/2007	In practice no longer: the last certificates were issued in May 2013, so their ten years have run out
A₂₀₁₃–G₂₀₁₃	The Act on the Energy Certificate of a Building 50/2013 and its first calculation rules	Some still are: most expire by November 2027 at the latest, some only in 2028
A₂₀₁₈–G₂₀₁₈	The Act on the Energy Certificate of a Building 50/2013 and the calculation rules in force since the start of 2018 (Decree 1048/2017)	Yes, for ten years from the date of issue

In practice, only the subscripts 2018 and 2013 appear in listings today.

The 2007 certificates have expired

Certificates issued under the law in force before June 2013 were valid for at most ten years, and for some larger buildings only four years. The last such certificates were issued by the end of May 2013, so the ten years of even the last of them ended by May 2023 at the latest. Certificates issued as part of a housing company’s manager’s certificate (isännöitsijäntodistus) expired as early as the end of 2014. If you find a certificate that refers to Act 487/2007, you can conclude that it has expired.

The 2013 certificates: most expire at the end of 2027

The new calculation rules came into force in December 2017 and at the start of 2018. Certificates drawn up before that will, under the ten-year cap, mostly expire by around the end of November 2027 – but not all of them. During the transition, certificates were still drawn up under the old rules, and the register was updated to the new rules only during the first months of 2018. That is why some certificates with the 2013 marking remain valid into 2028. The certificate’s own date of issue always gives the definite answer, not the year in the marking.

What changed in 2018?

Since the start of 2018, energy certificates have been calculated under a new decree (1048/2017). At the same time, the current energy carrier factors came in: electricity 1.20, district heating 0.50, fossil fuels 1.00 and renewable fuels used in the building 0.50. The factor weights purchased energy by the kind of energy it is. The decree sets the class limits by building use, and for small houses also by floor area.

The end result is that the same house can get a different class under the new rules than under the old ones, even if nothing in the house has changed.

Why can the class drop even though the house has not changed?

Because the calculation method is different, certificates cannot be compared across the legislative boundary. According to Motiva (the Finnish state-owned energy efficiency company), a building’s figures should only be compared with results under the same legislation – comparing certificates made under different rules does not give a true picture of energy efficiency.

So if the old certificate said C₂₀₁₃ and the new one says D₂₀₁₈, your house has not necessarily got worse: the classification has changed, not the house. We explain without formulas how the E-value and the class are calculated in the article how a house’s energy class is calculated. The class limits are in the articles building energy classes and apartment energy classes, and more about the factors in the article energy carrier emission factors.

Is there an energy class H?

There is, but it is not a class worse than G. The marking H is used on an energy certificate drawn up under the so-called simplified procedure. The law allows it for an individual sale or rental if the property is a house with at most two dwellings, or a dwelling in one, and its value is very low, or if there is another particularly justified reason, such as a sale or rental between close relatives.

The simplified certificate is an exception in many ways:

No ordinary E-value is calculated for it, and it is not drawn up by a qualified assessor on the basis of a site visit.
It is not stored in the energy certificate register.
The ten-year validity does not apply to it: it is made for that specific sale or rental.
If the simplified procedure has been used without the conditions set by law, an ordinary certificate must be obtained without delay.

Is it worth renewing the certificate before it expires?

A certificate only expires after ten years, but it often pays to order a new one earlier. A new certificate replaces the old one immediately. Typical reasons:

A renovation has improved the house. A new air source or ground source heat pump, windows or extra insulation do not show in the old certificate. A new certificate tells the buyer the current situation. We cover ways to a better result in the article how to get a good E-value.
A sale is coming up and the certificate expires soon. The buyer sees the expiry date, and the validity has to last through the whole sales process.
The housing company is applying for an energy grant. In the energy grant from Varke (the Housing Construction Centre of the Finnish State), the improvement in the E-value is compared with the level at the time the building was built, not with its current state. An existing certificate can be used as the baseline calculation only if it was calculated under the 2018 rules (Decree 1048/2017) and describes the building’s original solutions – a certificate with the 2013 marking does not qualify. More on the grant conditions in the article Varke’s energy grant.

The Energy Certificate Act is also being reformed because of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, and at the time of writing the Government proposal HE 155/2026 is being considered by Parliament. Until then, the rules described in this article apply. More about the directive in the article Energy Performance of Buildings Directive EPBD.

How to check your own certificate

The date of issue is printed on the certificate. If you cannot find the paper, check with our energy certificate check tool: it tells you whether the building has a valid certificate in the register. For data protection reasons, certificates of detached houses do not appear in the public search, so choose “Add your own energy certificate” in the tool and enter the key data of your certificate. More about the register in the article energy certificate register.

If the certificate has expired or is about to, we will draw up a new one – see energy certificate for a detached house and high-quality energy certificate, or submit a request for a quote straight away.

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