Covered Buildings and Deadlines

Public and privately-owned buildings 25,000 gross square feet and larger are covered by the Building Energy Use Benchmarking and Performance Standards Law and regulations.

DEP's Covered Buildings Inventory lists buildings that are covered by the law. This inventory is an approximation, meant to raise awareness about the law and help identify the buildings covered by the law. Each building owner will need to confirm their own building square footage to determine coverage under the law.

Covered Buildings

For benchmarking and BEPS purposes, Building means:

1. any single structure utilized or intended for supporting or sheltering any occupancy, except if a single structure contains two or more individually metered units operating independently that have stand-alone heating, cooling, hot water, and other mechanical systems, and no shared interior common areas, or;

2. two or more structures utilized or intended for supporting or sheltering any occupancy, that:

   • are serviced by a common energy meter;

   • have a common heating or cooling system;

   • share interior common areas; or

   • whose configuration otherwise prevents an accurate determination of the energy consumption attributable to each individual structure.

Think your building should be covered? Each building must confirm their own building square footage and metering / system configuration to determine coverage under the law. Not sure if your property should be covered? Review these  common coverage scenarios. If your building does not appear on the covered buildings inventory but you believe it should be covered, please contact [email protected]. 

Think your building should be exempted? An exemption can be applied for in the cases where:

• The building is less than 25,000 gross square feet.

• Your building may be exempt if it contains individually owned or leased spaces where:

  • each space is less than 25,000 gross square feet, and

  • each space does not share and is not connected by any interior space (even hallways), and

  • each space has its own energy systems (like HVAC and hot water heating) and there are no shared energy systems between spaces, and

  • each space has separate energy utility meters.

• More than 50% of the total gross floor area of the building is used for:

  • Public assembly in a building without walls; or,
  • Industrial uses where the majority of energy is consumed for manufacturing, the generation of electric power or district thermal energy to be consumed offsite, or for other process loads; or,
  • Transportation, communications, or utility infrastructure.

You may submit an exemption request by following these Instructions for submitting an Exemption (PDF).

Covered Buildings Deadlines

Covered buildings are grouped by size and use type. This phased grouping dictates when buildings began benchmarking, their baseline periods, and their interim and final building energy performance standards (BEPS) deadlines by which each building must either meet its performance standard or file and begin implementing a building performance improvement plan: