NEW YORK CITY-Ready or not, building owners across the city will be bound by the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan come springtime. Although the four laws passed by the City Council in December 2009 will be phased in over several years, Local Law 84, which focuses on energy and water benchmarking, goes into effect May 1 and applies to all existing buildings of 50,000 square feet or more citywide. The American Institute of Architects’ New York chapter and the Urban Green Council are getting the word out, conducting training sessions intended to walk owners and property managers through the process.

“It’s a big deal to measure your building and know your energy use index,” Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, president of AIA-NY, tells GlobeSt.com. In fact, May 1 is the deadline for taking these measurements, which must be done using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Portfolio Manager tool.

Using this tool, Castillo says, “gives you several pieces of information. You know your energy use and cost, your greenhouse gas emissions and also your water use. When you upload the information, you will have several measurements of your building.”

In addition, says Castillo, the tool eventually will be used to compare the building’s energy use metrics to that of a comparable property. “It’s quite transformational to have this information and know where you stand relative to other buildings,” she says. Starting in 2012, commercial buildings' scores will be made publicly available on the Department of Finance’s webpage; residential buildings’ scores to be posted in 2013.

Armed with this knowledge, and assuming that the benchmarking shows that the property’s energy or water use could stand to be improved, the owner’s next step would be to call in a professional—an architect, for example—to go over the building from top to bottom. “You’d look at the windows, for example—whether it’s single-glazing,” Castillo says. “Many older buildings have absolutely no insulation whatsoever. And then you look at the efficiency of your boilers and your fans, or it could even be leaks in the system that have never been addressed or controlled.”

A one-size-fits-all approach to possible solutions won’t work, says Castillo. “Historic buildings perform differently depending on the year or how it was constructed,” she says. “Sometimes you don’t want to stuff a cavity with insulation; it would just create mold. You really need air space.”

She adds that there’s “a whole host of building diagnostics that you should go through.” Not only possible remedies, but also an analysis of life-cycle cost should be considered. “You should do everything, but where do you start; what’s your payback?”

The Bloomberg administration may be in the vanguard when it comes to requiring energy benchmarking on commercial properties, but the mandate may eventually go nationwide. President Barack Obama spelled out his Better Buildings Initiative earlier this month, with the goal of reducing commercial properties’ energy use by 20% over the next decade.   

On its website, AIA-NY has a resource page providing additional information on benchmarking and other aspects of the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan. The UGC is sponsoring a series of presentations titled “What Owners & Managers Need to Know About the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan & Benchmarking Law” at the headquarters of the Mohawk Group, 71 W. 23rd St. A presentation scheduled for March 2 is sold out; the program will be repeated on March 7 and 23. Click here for more information.