The built environment accounts for around half of the UK’s carbon emissions. And yet, as the industry began to grapple with the scale of the challenge, an uncomfortable pattern had emerged: architects — the profession with the most direct influence over how buildings are designed — were increasingly being sidelined. Sustainability consultants and service engineers were filling the gap, bringing specialist knowledge but often defaulting to engineering solutions where a more integrated, design-led approach would have delivered better buildings.
EPD was the response. Conceived by Andrew Sutton as RSAW Vice President and developed in partnership with BRE, and directly encouraged by the Welsh Assembly Government, the course set out to give every Chartered Architect — not a specialist sub-group, but every architect — the knowledge, the credentials, and the confidence to lead low energy design from the outset.
The problem EPD addressed
The risk was clear: if architects lacked the technical foundations to engage credibly with low energy design, the profession’s role would shrink further in a field that was only going to grow in importance. The result would be buildings shaped more by engineering logic than by design thinking — and a further erosion of the architect’s central role in the delivery of the built environment.
The architect who can’t lead on sustainability won’t lead at all. EPD was about making that argument redundant.
EPD was not intended to create a cadre of sustainability specialists. It was conceived as a professional baseline: a course that all Chartered Architects should eventually pass through, so that low energy, sustainable design became inseparable from what it meant to be an architect — not an add-on, but the core.
What the course comprised
EPD was structured as three components, only one of which was mandatory, giving architects flexibility in how they engaged:
Free, online, automated. A review of the EPD syllabus with a multiple-choice quiz — allowing architects to gauge whether they could proceed directly to the assessment or would benefit from the training.
Optional. Four and a half non-consecutive days at locations across the UK, delivered by BRE experts. Design challenges, site issues, and the theory and practicalities of low energy delivery.
Mandatory. Taken under exam conditions alongside the BRE Accredited Professional (AP) test — a half day at locations across the UK. Passing conferred EPD accreditation and BRE AP status.
The BREEAM AP connection
EPD delivered BRE’s Accredited Professional recognition as an integral outcome — meaning that any scheme on which a registered EPD architect was involved could claim two BREEAM credits. This created a direct commercial incentive for both individual architects and their clients: early adopters could offer a tangible, measurable benefit to clients pursuing BREEAM certification, while clients with sustainability obligations had a clear, demonstrable way to identify architects who could deliver.
At course fees of £250+VAT for the assessment alone (or £742.50+VAT with training), EPD was designed to be accessible at scale — with a financial model that worked for both RSAW/RIBA and BRE only if large numbers of architects engaged.
The longer vision
EPD was always conceived as a transitional mechanism, not a permanent destination. The long-term ambition was that RIBA-recognised architectural education would eventually pre-qualify students as EPD-assessed, making the course itself redundant as those graduates entered practice and the body of Chartered Architects transformed from within. Over several decades, the goal was simple: that the role of architect would become synonymous with the role of low energy, sustainable design consultant.
The course was developed in direct response to encouragement from the Welsh Assembly Government, positioning Wales as the location where this kind of systemic professional transformation would begin. RSAW and BRE would share the course income — RSAW managing promotion and administration, BRE delivering the specialist training content — with both parties benefiting from the wider ecosystem effects: a stronger BREEAM market, a more credible and commercially relevant architectural profession, and a construction sector better equipped to meet the UK’s carbon reduction obligations.