Fire Safety in the Age of Clean Energy, a Growing Challenge: a review of Efectis services

27/5/2025

As the world accelerates towards a cleaner, more sustainable future, our buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure are undergoing profound transformations. Electrification is at the heart of this change: buildings are now equipped with solar panels, energy storage systems, electric vehicle charging stations, and a range of smart technologies. Vehicles are shifting from combustion engines to electric motors or using Alternative Fuels (AF). All of these developments aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve the environment.

However, alongside these positive changes comes an often-overlooked consequence: new and complex fire safety challenges.

Fire safety is, unfortunately, a reactive field. In many cases, safety considerations are only addressed after new technologies are deployed—or worse, after incidents have occurred. Rather than being integrated from the beginning of design and innovation, fire protection measures are often added later through retrofitting or updated regulations. This lag between innovation and protection must be closed to ensure that the energy transition does not come at the expense of safety.

Electrified Buildings: New Risks, New Responsibilities

The push for decarbonised buildings is well supported by regulations such as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) in the European Union. The EPBD mandates the integration of building-applied (BAPV) and building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), solar thermal systems, and energy storage in new buildings, large public structures, and buildings undergoing renovation. The goal is to create zero-emission buildings that generate, store, and manage their own energy.

While this transformation is critical to combating climate change, it introduces new fire hazards. PV panels also contain a converter, batteries, cables and cable trays, penetrations, thus concentrating all fire safety challenges. Electrical faults in photovoltaic systems can lead to overheating and fire, especially when panels are integrated into roofs or facades. Similarly, batteries – whether for energy storage or powering vehicles – pose risks of thermal runaway, particularly if damaged or poorly ventilated.

Furthermore, the choice of construction materials, especially insulation for roofs and facades, must be coherent with both the energy systems installed and fire safety requirements. These layers of complexity make it vital to reassess and adapt fire safety strategies at all levels.

The Rise of Energy Storage and Electric Vehicles

As the EPBD promotes the increased use of energy storage systems (ESS) in residential and commercial buildings, we are witnessing a proliferation of battery installations—both in dedicated containers and integrated into homes (e.g., in garages or basements). These systems store large amounts of energy and, if compromised, can cause intense fires that are difficult to extinguish.

The rise of electric vehicles (EVs) adds another dimension. While fires involving EVs are currently rare, the numbers are rising as adoption increases, and older battery packs remain in circulation. Charging infrastructure – especially in confined or poorly ventilated spaces – must be carefully designed to mitigate risk.

Multiplicity of Alternative Fuel Vehicles

As part of the ecological transition, Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs) are experiencing significant growth. Whether electric, hybrid, hydrogen-powered, or running on natural gas, these technologies aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. While their development represents a key step toward more sustainable mobility, it also brings new safety challenges. In particular, the specific features of these vehicles, such as pressurized fuel tanks, introduce unfamiliar risks for fire safety, requiring a rethinking of fire behaviour, explosion events, current prevention and emergency response protocols.

A Need for Testing, Qualification, and Public Awareness

To ensure safety, it is essential to test and qualify energy-related systems and materials under realistic fire conditions. This includes understanding how batteries and photovoltaic systems behave during a fire, and identifying the best protective measures to contain or prevent fire spread. These results inform installation standards, intervention procedures for first responders, and public awareness campaigns to teach safe practices.

Through years of experience, Efectis contributes to comprehensive risk assessments, experimental testing, and numerical simulations to model fire behaviour. Their work helps quantify the risks and develop tailored fire safety strategies for infrastructures and buildings equipped with new energy technologies, as well as emerging problematics related to new energies such as vehicles. The energy transition is not just a technological shift it is a transformation of how we build, live, and move. Ensuring fire safety in this new context is not optional. It is essential to protect people, property, and the very environment we seek to preserve.

How can we help you?

Efectis is part of different associations and platforms within fire safety engineering, testing, standardization and research. Efectis plays an active role in the research and development of new solutions and technologies to improve fire safety. Working with industrial and academic partners, Efectis contributes to the development of innovations in the field of fire safety. Efectis has extensive experience and recognized expertise as a laboratory approved by the French Ministry for fire reaction and fire resistance testing of construction products, and large knowledge of the market for building insulation products. We actively participate in Technical Committees such as ISO TC 92 SC2, CEN TC127, and SH02. Working with industrial and academic partners, we contribute to the development of innovations in the field of fire safety.

For more information, please contact Mohamad El Houssami