Are a building's benchmarking numbers public?

Yes — the city discloses reported building-level metrics annually. The disclosure is the point: performance becomes visible to tenants, buyers, and analysts, not just to the owner and the utility.

Do the letter grades affect anything legally?

The grade itself is a disclosure device — its obligations are to post it. The consequences that carry money run through the underlying data: benchmarking compliance itself, and the emissions arithmetic Local Law 97 builds on the reported consumption.

Why would an efficient building have a mediocre grade?

Because reported consumption reflects use as much as fabric: intensive occupancies benchmark worse than gentle ones in the same physical building. The metrics reward context — reading a grade without the building's use profile is reading half the evidence.

Which buildings have to benchmark?

Buildings above the law's size threshold, with the exact coverage rules — including multi-building lots and condominiums — defined by the current text. The city publishes the covered-buildings list annually, so coverage is a checkable fact rather than a judgment.

What is energy use intensity?

Consumption normalized by floor area — energy used per square foot per year — which is what makes buildings of different sizes comparable. It is the workhorse metric of the benchmarking framework and the first number to read in any building's submission.

LL84 Benchmarking & Energy Grades: The Building's Public Report Card

By Ankit — Founder, PearlAudit · Last reviewed 2026-07-11

Local Law 84 requires owners of buildings above the law's size threshold to report annual energy and water consumption through the federal benchmarking framework, building by building, year after year. The reported data is public; the letter grades posted at building entrances derive from it; and Local Law 97's emissions arithmetic is estimated from it. For analysts, a building's benchmarking trail is its operating-efficiency biography.

What gets reported, and by whom

Covered buildings report their whole-building energy and water consumption annually, normalized through the federal benchmarking framework into comparable metrics — energy-use intensity above all, and, where the framework's models can compute one for the building type, a percentile efficiency score. The obligation sits on the owner, the deadline recurs every year, and non-filing is a violation with penalties that accumulate. The result, across the covered stock, is one of the most complete public records anywhere of how buildings actually perform — not as designed, as operated.

The grades in the lobby

The letter grades posted at building entrances are the benchmarking data made legible: the city's energy-grade requirement converts a building's efficiency score into a letter, posted where tenants and visitors see it. The grade is a blunt instrument by design — a single letter compressing a year of consumption — and its purpose is salience rather than precision. For reading a specific building, the underlying reported metrics carry far more information than the letter; the letter's job is to make somebody ask for them.

What the trail reveals — and what it doesn't

Read across years, benchmarking data describes operations: a stable, efficient trail suggests attentive management; deterioration suggests aging systems or occupancy changes; a step-change improvement usually marks a retrofit paying off. Read against peers, it locates a building within its class. Read forward, it is the basis for estimating Local Law 97 exposure — which converts these numbers from disclosure into money.

Its limits deserve equal respect. Reported consumption reflects occupancy and use as much as physical efficiency — an empty building benchmarks deceptively well, an intensive user deceptively badly. Metrics are self-reported through a framework with its own conventions, corrections happen, and vintage matters. The honest use is as evidence with context, not as a verdict.

Using benchmarking in property analysis

Three questions extract most of the value. Is the building filing at all? — absence where the law requires reporting is a compliance finding on its own. What do the metrics say about trajectory? — level and trend against the building's class, ahead of any retrofit underwriting. And what does the consumption imply under tightening emissions caps? — the LL97 bridge, where efficiency becomes a line item. PearlAudit surfaces building energy and compliance facts from municipal records with honest nulls where no filing exists, which is exactly how absence should be reported: as absence, not as a clean bill.

Frequently asked questions

Are a building's benchmarking numbers public?: Yes — the city discloses reported building-level metrics annually. The disclosure is the point: performance becomes visible to tenants, buyers, and analysts, not just to the owner and the utility.
Do the letter grades affect anything legally?: The grade itself is a disclosure device — its obligations are to post it. The consequences that carry money run through the underlying data: benchmarking compliance itself, and the emissions arithmetic Local Law 97 builds on the reported consumption.
Why would an efficient building have a mediocre grade?: Because reported consumption reflects use as much as fabric: intensive occupancies benchmark worse than gentle ones in the same physical building. The metrics reward context — reading a grade without the building's use profile is reading half the evidence.
Which buildings have to benchmark?: Buildings above the law's size threshold, with the exact coverage rules — including multi-building lots and condominiums — defined by the current text. The city publishes the covered-buildings list annually, so coverage is a checkable fact rather than a judgment.
What is energy use intensity?: Consumption normalized by floor area — energy used per square foot per year — which is what makes buildings of different sizes comparable. It is the workhorse metric of the benchmarking framework and the first number to read in any building's submission.

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