What is the Smart Readiness Indicator for buildings?

The Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) is an EU rating scheme, set up under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, that assesses a building's capability to use smart technologies. The European Commission describes building "smartness" as the ability to sense, interpret, communicate and actively respond to changing conditions in the building's technical systems, in the external environment including energy grids, and in occupants' demands.

The important word is capability. The SRI rates what a building's systems are able to do, not how much energy they save or whether the functions are actually used. Read with that in mind, it is a useful tool; read as a performance rating, it misleads.

What gets assessed

According to the Commission, an SRI assessment evaluates smart-ready services in nine technical domains:

• heating
• cooling
• domestic hot water
• ventilation
• lighting
• the dynamic building envelope
• electricity
• electric vehicle charging
• monitoring and control

Those services are judged against seven impact criteria:

• energy efficiency
• maintenance and fault prediction
• comfort
• convenience
• health, well-being and accessibility
• information to occupants
• energy flexibility and storage

The result is an overall SRI score and class, expressing how close the building is to maximum smart readiness, together with separate scores for three key functionalities: optimising energy efficiency and in-use performance; adapting operation to occupants' needs; and adapting to signals from the grid, such as energy flexibility.

Optional for now, and decided country by country

The SRI's legal framework comes from the 2018 revision of the EPBD and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/2155, with an accompanying implementing regulation. Under the 2024 recast of the EPBD (Article 15), the SRI remains an optional scheme for now, and each EU country decides whether to test or implement it. National authorities that implement it define the technical framework, meaning the catalogue of services, functionality levels and calculation parameters, while a generic framework, updated in 2026, is also available. Article 15 also called for a Commission report on testing and implementation by 30 June 2026; that report has been delayed, and the Commission now expects it at the beginning of 2027. Taking account of that report, the Directive requires the Commission to adopt, by 30 June 2027, a delegated act applying the scheme to non-residential buildings whose heating, air-conditioning or combined ventilation systems exceed 290 kW, so the optional status may not last for larger buildings.

Two practical consequences follow. Before planning around the SRI, confirm whether and how it applies in the country concerned. And do not assume that scores produced under different national frameworks can be compared directly.

The SRI should also not be confused with the EPBD's Article 13 requirements for building automation and control systems in larger non-residential buildings, which apply by output thresholds set in the directive and transposed nationally. A good SRI score does not by itself demonstrate compliance with those national rules.

Reading a score as a planning tool

For owners, the SRI's real value is its structure: a consistent checklist of services across domains, each linked to the outcomes it influences. Used well, it exposes gaps, such as no fault-prediction capability for heating or no ability to respond to grid signals. It gives owners, designers and contractors a common vocabulary for discussing upgrade options, and it shows investors or occupants which capabilities exist.

What it cannot do is vouch for the building in use, so the evidence behind each score needs checking. A function may be available in a product without being enabled, commissioned or maintained in the actual building. Cost and dependency matter as much as points: some upgrades support several outcomes the owner values, while others add complexity for little practical benefit.