RE2020 retail & restaurants
The 2026 building type
Retail and restaurant buildings are among the tertiary types brought into RE2020 in 2026, with specific energy profiles.
RE2020 for retail and restaurants
Retail and restaurant buildings are among the tertiary types brought into RE2020 in 2026, with specific energy profiles. ARKEMEP runs the thermal and LCA studies for these projects.
Profile
Internal gains dominate the thermal balance.
Retail and restaurant spaces generate heat from lighting, refrigeration, cooking and occupancy at levels that dominate the thermal balance. The consequence is counter-intuitive: these buildings often need heat rejection in mid-season, and insulation improvements can worsen summer comfort rather than improve it.
Restaurant kitchens add a specific set of constraints, extraction rates, make-up air, acoustic impact of extraction plant on neighbours, which interact with the regulatory calculation and with the neighbourhood.
Fit-out
The shell is regulated, the fit-out changes the result.
A commercial shell delivered compliant can be made non-compliant by a tenant's fit-out, because lighting and refrigeration choices sit outside the base building contract. Where the owner carries the regulatory obligation, this is a contractual question as much as a technical one.
Once in operation, the tertiary decree applies to retail premises above the size threshold, with the same annual declaration and trajectory as any other tertiary building.
Neighbours
Extraction plant is the recurring dispute.
Restaurant extraction and refrigeration condensers sit close to dwellings in most urban locations, and they run at hours when background noise is lowest. The applicable rules are based on measured emergence, which means compliance depends on the surroundings as much as on the equipment.
Designing the plant location and screening at the outset costs little. Relocating a condenser after a complaint, in an operating restaurant, costs a great deal more than the equipment did.
Going further
Related pages.
Retail and restaurant projects draw on these pages.
- RE2020 in the tertiary sector — the general framework
- RE2020 for offices — the comparable case
- Tertiary decree — applies once in operation
- OPERAT annual declaration — the annual filing
- Equipment noise and neighbours — extraction and refrigeration plant
- ARKEMEP: MEP engineering — kitchens, extraction, refrigeration
- Life-cycle carbon assessment — the carbon budget
- Working with property developers — shell and fit-out responsibilities
- ICPE acoustics — the same emergence logic at industrial scale
- Measurements and diagnostics — how emergence is measured
- Engineering — plant design and mitigation
Discuss your project
Engineering, environmental advisory and independent certification under one group, with a strict separation of roles.
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