The letters
- AScore of 85 or higher
- B70 to 84
- C55 to 69
- DBelow 55
- FRequired benchmarking was not submitted
- NExempt, or a building type ENERGY STAR cannot score
Compliance · New York City only
NYC Energy Grades
The letter at the door is last year's ENERGY STAR score. It carries one fine, and it is not for the grade.
Every New York City building over 25,000 square feet gets a letter grade each October, taken from the ENERGY STAR score in its Local Law 84 benchmarking filing. The grade is posted near each public entrance for a year. A low grade costs nothing on its own; not posting it costs $1,250. This page explains where the letter comes from, what it means for the building, and what moves it.
Checked October 28, 2026. The 2026 labels were issued October 1 and had to be posted by October 31, 2026. The next benchmarking filing, which sets the 2027 grade, is due May 1, 2027.
The scale
One number, six letters.
The grade is the building's ENERGY STAR score, from 1 to 100, sorted into bands set by Local Law 95 of 2019. The score compares the building's energy use per square foot with similar buildings nationally, adjusted for weather, hours and occupancy. A 50 is the national median for that building type.
What the letter is not
An F is not a failing building. It is a building whose owner did not file the benchmarking report, so there is no score to grade. A D is a real score below 55, which means the building uses more energy per square foot than most buildings of its kind.
An N means the building type has no ENERGY STAR model (many industrial, laboratory and mixed-use buildings) or the building is exempt. An N-grade label shows no score.
Who gets a grade
Every building on the Covered Buildings List.
Coverage follows Local Law 84 benchmarking: a single building over 25,000 gross square feet, or buildings on one lot totalling 100,000 square feet or more. If the building is on the Department of Buildings' Covered Buildings List, it gets a grade. There is no separate list for grades and no way to opt out other than an exemption from benchmarking itself.
May 1
Benchmarking report due in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager for the prior calendar year. The score in that report becomes the grade.
NYCOctober 1
Labels become available in the DOB NOW Public Portal, by borough, block and lot. The owner or a representative attests before printing.
NYCOctober 31
Posting deadline: the label goes up in a conspicuous location near each public entrance, not only the main one, and stays until the next October 1.
NYCThe 2025 window was the exception, not the new rule
For the 2025 filing year only, the Department moved the window to December 1 to 31, 2025. Its February 27, 2026 service notice put the 2026 window back to October 1 to 31, 2026, and said the 2025 extensions do not carry into 2026.
What a low grade costs
The grade itself carries no fine. Not posting it does.
$1,250
Civil penalty for not posting
Under 1 RCNY §103-06(l)(2), for failing to download the label from DOB NOW and display it. One penalty per violation. No credentialed signer is involved; anyone can print and post it.
$0
Fine for a D
No local law fines a building for its grade. The exposure is reputational: the letter is visible to every tenant, buyer, lender and prospective tenant who walks in.
24%
Not posted, in a 2026 State audit
The State Comptroller's April 21, 2026 audit visited 55 covered buildings in May and June 2025: 13 had no label posted, and 13 of the 42 that did had it somewhere the public could not see, one in a desk drawer. The audit found the Department does not inspect for labels and recommended it start.
Why a D matters more for a Local Law 97 building
The grade and the emissions limit come from the same benchmarking filing. A building scoring below 55 is using more energy per square foot than most of its peers, and on gas or oil that usually means it is at or over its 2030 emissions limit. The grade is public a year before anyone looks at the emissions report. What the 2030 limit means for your building →
What moves the score
Operations first, then equipment.
The score is energy per square foot, weather-normalised, against peers. Anything that cuts energy use raises it, but the cheapest points are in how the building is run. These are the steps in the order we take them.
1
Check the filing before the building
A wrong gross square footage, a missing meter, a tenant space counted twice or a default occupancy figure can move the score by many points without a single change to the building. Correct the Portfolio Manager record first.
2
Schedules, set points and overrides
Equipment running when the building is empty, manual overrides left from last summer and set points nobody owns are the most common findings in a controls review, and the fastest to fix. How a controls review works →
3
Sequences and sensors
Simultaneous heating and cooling, economizers that never open and sensors that have drifted keep energy use high while the front end shows green. Why a running BAS can hide problems →
4
Equipment, sized on measured load
Replacing a chiller, rooftop unit or boiler moves the score, but only after the first three steps, because they change the load the new equipment is sized for. Before you replace equipment →
What a score change looks like in practice
The national labs put the median saving from correcting how a building is operated at 6% to 12% of annual energy, with paybacks under two years (figures and sources on the controls page). The score is not linear with energy, so the letter change for a given saving depends on where the building starts; a building in the 50s has more to gain per point than one in the 80s.
[Placeholder, J-2.9: whether ieComfort prepares the benchmarking filing for clients, or only reviews it. Remove this line once Joe answers.]
Posting the label
Print it, post it near every public entrance, keep it up a year.
1
Open DOB NOW
Go to the DOB NOW Public Portal, Building Energy Efficiency Rating Label tab, and search by borough, block and lot.
2
Attest and print
Enter the owner or representative's details, check the attestation boxes, including the one confirming the label will be posted, and submit. The label downloads.
3
Post it
Near each public entrance, where the public can see it, by October 31. A lobby desk drawer, a management office or a service entrance does not count.
4
If the label will not generate
A score exists in Portfolio Manager but no label appears: email sustainability@buildings.nyc.gov before October 31. A printing outage reported within 30 days of October 31 is a defence to the violation under §103-06(m), as is photo proof of a correctly posted label.
Photo placeholder
Posted energy grade label at a building entrance. Replace this text element with an Image element.
Posted energy grade label at a building entrance. Replace this text element with an Image element.
The next step
Find out what is behind the letter.
Send the building's address and its most recent benchmarking report or ENERGY STAR score, plus a recent utility bill if you have one. We check the filing for errors, read the score against the building type, and tell you whether the next move is a correction to the filing, a controls review or equipment, in that order.
Until the screening tool is live, this is a short intake form. We reply by email.
Sources and dates
- NYC Administrative Code §28-309.12 (Local Law 33 of 2018, as amended by Local Law 95 of 2019 and Local Law 126 of 2021); 1 RCNY §103-06(l) and (m).
- NYC Department of Buildings, Benchmarking and Energy Efficiency Rating page and Energy Grades page (grade scale, DOB NOW label process, $1,250 penalty, violation defences), read October 28, 2026.
- NYC Department of Buildings service notices: Sustainability Deadlines, February 27, 2026 (2026 posting window October 1 to 31, 2026); Energy Efficiency Rating Label, November 25, 2025 (2025 window moved to December 1 to 31, 2025; label reflects prior-year data).
- Office of the New York State Comptroller, Implementation of Selected Aspects of the Climate Mobilization Act, report 2024-N-1, April 21, 2026 (55 buildings sampled; 13 unposted; 13 of 42 not visible to the public; recommendation that DOB inspect).
- U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR, Portfolio Manager score methodology and score-updates page (the 1 to 100 score, 50 as median; multifamily and CBECS model updates listed for 2025; none for 2026), read October 28, 2026.
- Savings figures: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (2021) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2020), cited in full on the controls page.
- Last reviewed October 28, 2026. Next review before October 1, 2027, or when DOB publishes a 2027 service notice, whichever is first.