Local Law 84 – Features and basic components of the law

Local Law 84 – Features and basic components of the law

The New York City has lots of local rules and regulations to which the buildings of the city should abide by, in order to get the necessary approvals and permissions. NYC Local Law 84 is one of them. This is a law which helps the buildings of the city to be greener and greater. All buildings that fall within a particular limit should follow the rules mentioned in this law and should have ample provisions to save energy and water in their premises. The fundamental concepts of this law are mentioned in the pints below.

Meaning of NYC Local Law 84

This is a new law with respect to energy and is often referred to as the "energy benchmarking law". This law was passed during 2009; however it was only during 1st May 2010, that this law became fully operational in New York City. This is because the new law uses a benchmarking tool known as portfolio manager which helps building owners to assess their conservation capacities with respect to the benchmarks available in the law. According to this law, all building owners with properties of over 50000sq.feet should submit their energy and water consumption details into the relevant systems for every quarter, failing which, they would have to pay a fine $500 for each quarter.

Concept of benchmarking

The NYC Local Law 84 ensures that all qualified business owners should submit all relevant details about their power and water consumption into the system. The law then uses two kinds of benchmarking – internal and external. Internal benchmarking system is one where an owner’s energy and water consumption is compared against their consumptions of previous years. External benchmarking system is one where an owner’s energy consumption is compared against the usage details of similar buildings in that area. Based on the findings, owners are advised on measures to improve energy consumption in their buildings.

Using the services of a professional

If you are a property owner, it could get highly complex for you to file your taxes and submit your energy consumption bills in the system. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you take up the services of a professional, who can do the tax submission processes for you in a breeze. These professionals are highly proficient with the requirements of the NYC Local Law 84; hence you don’t have to worry about complying with the rules and regulations on a timely manner. These expert agencies deal with many buildings at a time, due to which they have extensive knowledge on subjects related to energy consumption and identifying opportunities for the same.

Non-compliance

If buildings do not comply with the LL84, their respective owners have to pay a fine of $500 per quarter. If an owner doesn’t submit energy and water consumption reports of his property within the system for the whole year, his fine comes up to a huge amount of $2000. There is no way that property owners can evade this amount. The only solution available with them is to pay the fine amount that they are levied with and go about submitting the reports from the next period onwards. The fine amounts are indeed quite high; however this has been set up deliberately to intimidate property owners, so that they submit their quarterly reports on time without any delays.

Cuth Bert is a widely respected voice in the field of Real Law and a regular contributor of articles and guidelines on LL 84 and LL 87 within some of the most authoritative