On December 28, 2009, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Local Law 84 (LL84), mandating annual energy reports for any privately owned buildings over 50,000 square feet. (In October 2016, the city expanded LL84 and LL88 to include buildings 25,000 Sq. Ft. and higher, though, this doesn’t officially go into effect until 2018.) Enacted as part of the city’s Greener, Greater Buildings Plan (GGBP), LL84 was designed to help building owners not just measure energy use, but to develop actionable energy efficiency strategies based on that data. By the time the first benchmarking report was released in 2012, the city had gathered energy usage information from 1.8 million square feet of commercial and residential space, making it one of the largest accumulations of benchmarking data gathered for a single jurisdiction. “Buildings account for 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in New York City, yet many property owners and managers do not know they [can] be a part of the solution and save money by making their buildings more energy efficient,” said Mayor Bloomberg in a statement after the first benchmarking reports were released in 2012. “This benchmarking report will help us understand where we can act most quickly to significantly reduce GHG emissions and achieve our PlaNYC goals.” Lights, Meters, Action Often considered the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency implementation, improving a building’s lighting system can dramatically reduce energy consumption. In New York City, roughly 18% of energy use in non-residential buildings can be attributed to lighting, which also accounts for 18% of the city’s carbon emissions. With the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% within the next 15 years, Local Law 88 (LL88) was designed to address the need to encourage lighting upgrades for improved energy efficiency and reduced...