Auditing Energy Just Got Easier

City Councilman Peter Koo has successfully sponsored a bill that allows a co-op corporation that owns more than one building on different tax block numbers to consolidate their Local Law 87 energy efficiency reports into one document.

Local Law 87 requires buildings over 50,000 square feet to audit energy and water consumption and submit an Energy Efficiency Report (EER) every 10 years. (EERs are not to be confused with the annual energy usage benchmarking reports required by Local Law 84.) The purpose of these audits is to ensure that building owners are aware of their energy consumption, as well as to ensure that their equipment and systems are working correctly and efficiently.

Penalties for not submitting the report start at $3,000 and go up to $5,000 for every year that the report is not filed.

“It does take a lot of time to prepare these forms,” says Koo. “When you have this form that requires buildings to submit their energy consumption and submit energy reports, some of the building owners told us, ‘Why don’t we consolidate this so that we can fill out all the forms together?’” 

The bill, passed on March 25, currently covers only co-ops, but Koo hasn’t forgotten condos. “We’ll do an amendment next,” he says. “We just wanted to pass this first, so that the co-op owners understand we are trying to help them. In the next few months, we’ll work on another bill to include condos.” He adds: “This effort will streamline reporting and simplify paperwork for both the city and property owners.”