Energy Benchmarking: If the Data Isn’t Accurate, Is the Law Any Good?
Habitat, January 21, 2014Local Law 84 of 2009 mandates that New York City buildings larger than 50,000 square feet must record and track their energy and water use, with the grades made public. This allow you to see how well your building is doing and how it compares with other buildings. But energy experts say there are still kinks to be worked out: The data is not always accurate and it’s difficult to access.
Mitchell Ingerman, president of Aurora Energy Advisors, an energy consultant company that is on track to do 1,500 LL84 submissions this year, says some of the data — expressed as Energy Use Intensity (EUI) scores — is problematic. For example, he claims that thousands of buildings have probably underreported energy usage because they only benchmarked common-area energy usage, not common areas plus the energy used inside apartments.