NYC’s local electric grid is currently equipped to handle building electrification, and it has enough capacity to install cold-climate heat pumps before the city’s peak power demand shifts away from summer. In addition, implementing flexibility- and energy efficiency strategies at the same time as electrifying heat and hot water systems can keep building power demands manageable.

This report identifies nine crucial steps to jumpstart electrification in the city’s large multifamily buildings—and also facilitate compliance with the City’s groundbreaking building emissions law (Local Law 97).

This report presents a trend analysis of 10 years of benchmarked energy and emissions, evaluates the energy and water use of midsize buildings for the first time and assesses the progress NYC’s benchmarked building stock has made towards citywide decarbonization goals and mandates.

New York State’s nation-leading climate targets require an unprecedented greening of the state’s electric grid over the next two decades. The grid is now more important than ever to buildings in NYC: the emissions caps in Local Law 97 will soon make building owners accountable for carbon emissions from electricity use.