What is NYC building benchmarking?
Under Local Law 84, owners of NYC buildings over 25,000 gross square feet — or lots and condo boards over 100,000 sq ft combined — must report a full calendar year of energy and water use through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager by May 1 each year. Late filers are fined $500 per quarter, up to $2,000 a year, and the data sets your building’s public energy grade and its Local Law 97 emissions figure.
Three dates every covered owner should know
- May 1 — Benchmarking report due for the previous calendar year.
- Aug 1, Nov 1, Feb 1 — Each quarterly checkpoint you are still unfiled adds another $500 penalty.
- October 1–31 — Your new energy efficiency grade is issued and must be posted near each public entrance.
Is your building covered?
Your building must benchmark if it appears on the City’s Covered Buildings List. As a rule of thumb, that means:
- A single building of 25,000 gross sq ft or more
- Two or more buildings on one tax lot totalling over 100,000 sq ft
- Two or more condo buildings under one board totalling over 100,000 sq ft
Not sure?
Send us your address or BBL and we’ll confirm coverage, check for open benchmarking violations and tell you what you owe — free, within one business day.
Why a “simple” filing goes wrong
Benchmarking looks like data entry. The errors that trigger violations — and distort your grade and LL97 numbers — usually come from:
- Reporting base-building meters only instead of whole-building use, including tenant meters
- Wrong property type or gross floor area, which skews your ENERGY STAR score
- BBL/BIN identifiers that don’t match Department of Finance records
- Entering data but never sharing the property with NYC so it processes in BEAM
- Missing months of utility data or skipping the water step
Benchmarking is the first step to Local Law 97
The numbers you file under LL84 feed straight into your energy grade and your LL97 carbon emissions report. A sloppy filing can make a compliant building look like it’s over its emissions limit — or hide a real penalty until it’s too late to plan. We reconcile your benchmarking data against your LL97 limits every year so there are no surprises.
How we handle it
- 1Confirm coverage — Covered Buildings List, BBL/BIN and floor area checked against City records.
- 2
Collect whole-building data — Utility authorizations, tenant meters, fuel oil and steam, water.
- 3
Build and audit Portfolio Manager — Property type, space uses and meter setup verified before submission.
- 4File and confirm — Shared with NYC and tracked until accepted in BEAM.
- 5
Clear violations — Past-year gaps fixed and penalties resolved through DOB NOW: Safety.
- 6
Report your exposure — Your energy grade outlook and LL97 position in one summary.
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