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Time is now forNewYork'sgreen, greatbuildings planBy J.crfis J. Prnrcom, Esq.o Pnnrcomo LLC

In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg, as part ofPIaNYC 2030, signed four pieces of legisla-tion regulating the enerry and water efficiencyof buildings in New York City.

Affecting over 20,000 publicly- and pri-vately-owned buildings inNYC, the Mayor's"Greener, Greater Buildings Plan" touteditself as being "the most comprehensive setof efficiency laws in the nation."

With many of the stated deadlines forcompliance with two of these Local Laws -Local Laws 84 and 87 - eithgr past or rapidly-approaching, we expect there to be an increasein litigation and enforcement actions, unlessbuilding owners (and their property managersor attorneys) act quickly.

"There are penalties fornon-compliance, and thus

potential enforcement octionsthat mav land them in court. "

The benchmarkrequirement of Local Law184, which is intended to assess the currentstate of the relevant buildings - the starting

lpoint against which improvements may bemeasured - has already passed:

For city buildings - defined to include(with exceptions) a building (of more than

10,000 gross square feet)that is owned by the cify,or for which the city regu-larly pays all or part ofthe annual energy bills- the benchmarking wasto be completed by May1,2010.

For covered buildings- defined to include (withexceptions) (i) a build-ing that exceeds 50,000gross square feet, (ii) two

or more buildings on the same tax lot thattogether exceed 100,000 gross square feet, or(iii) two or more buildings held in the condo-minium form of ownership that are governedby the same board of managers and that to-gether exceed 1 00,000 gross square feet - thebenchmarking deadline was May 1,2071.

However, although this benchmark law haspassed, it seems unlikely that all of the 20,000buildings have met these requirements.

Moreover, these energy and water-usebenchmarking requirements are an annualrequirement, with new reports due by Mayofeach year.

As for Local Law 87, it requires buildingefficiency audits to be performed every 10years for those same 20,000 "city buildings"and "covered buildings".

Based on the results of the audits, LocalLaw 87 also requires, in certain instances, ei-

ther retrofitting (replacement of non-compliantsystems) or retro-commissioning (fine-tuningof non-compliant systems), generally withinone year of completion of the energy audit.

So, as we said, the deadlines for Local Law84 have passed. But the deadlines for LocalLaw 87 compliance have not: the first set of,energy audits will be due n2013, for thosebuildings whose tax block number ends in3 - that's next year!

For those buildings whose tax block num-ber ends in 4, their energy audits will be due1n2074, and so on.

Benchmarkingthe water and energy use ofbuildings is the first step, with the energy auditand the retrofitting and retro-commissioningbeing the second step to ultimately meetingthe GreeneE Greater Buildings Plan's goal ofreducing energy and water use in the City byfive percent reduction below 2005 greenhouse

gas emission levels by 2030.Building managers who are not very fa-

miliar with environmental reporting require-ments may be surprised to learn that thereare penalties for non-compliance, and thuspotential enforcement actions that may landthem in court, with all the headaches attendanton such litigation.

To sum up: the deadlines for compliancewith Local Laws 84 and 87 have either alreadypassed or are rapidly approaching. Moreover,one compliance deadline cantrigger additionalcompliance deadlines which generally must bemet within a relatively short (e.g., one year)time frame.

It is therefore imperative that building own-ers make every effort to avoid non-compliancewith the Greener, Greater Building Plan beforeit's too late - which is when the Citv findsout about it.