About Local Law 97

Introduced in 2019, LL97 is one of the country’s most thorough initiatives for cutting emissions. It calls for most buildings above 25,000 square feet to adhere to new requirements for energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions by 2024, proceeding with even stricter limits for 2030. If such requirements are not met, penalties for noncompliance will be filed.

What buildings are more at risk?

Local Law 97 marks more than 50,000 residential and commercial buildings. Therefore, chances are yours is most likely on this list!

It specifically affects:

Buildings that cover more than 25,000 square feet that file Local Law 84.
Two or more buildings with a combined square footage of more than 50,000 square feet, located in the same tax lot.
Over 50,000 square feet that are shared between two or more buildings, owned by one condo association and overseen by the same board of managers.

How severe are the penalties? How can they be calculated?

Buildings that violate the regulation will be subject to $268 annual fines for each ton of excess emissions.
To the bigger buildings and the ones with inefficiency energy equipment doing the most polluting, this could result in millions of dollar fines.
Building emissions restrictions are determined using two separate benchmarks: the first, for the years 2024 through 2029, and the second, for the years 2030 through 2034. We kindly remind you that the goal of this Local Law is to reduce the emissions produced by the city’s largest buildings by 40 percent between these compliance periods, and 80 percent by 2050.

What We Offer

F&D Partners will be with you every step of the way!

• Begin with a free consultation to know more about your building.
  What fines are you expected to face?
  Where does your building stand?
• A 60+ pages long thorough study, where NYSERDA will pay 50% of the cost for commercial buildings and 75% of the cost for residential buildings, will be provided to you by us, explaining in detail the analysis conducted, measurements taken and recommended changes.

Our process:

• An engineer inspects the building and its mechanical equipment.
• In 12 weeks the study is finished with a detailed analysis of your building and recommended measures to lower your emissions.
• A roadmap is created with your team to help your organization comply with LL97.
• Once you choose the projects, F&D Partners can help with engineering designs, project management and apply for incentives from utilities.
• F&D Partners will help you monitor all of your utilities through its softwares: energy, water, emissions level and natural gas. This is all done with a simple app, very easy and efficient to use. Just one click away from constantly being aware of all your data!
• Most importantly A lifetime Partnership! F&D Partners will always have your best interest at heart. We are here to help you!

How is F&D Partners different from many other consultants?

• NYSERDA usually wants to see energy efficiency recommendations that will reduce 25-30% of the emissions but in many cases buildings need to cut more than that, so, we would recommend projects to lower their emissions by over 65% at no extra cost . Other consultants would not do double the work at the same price and in their case they ask for $200/hr – $300/hr.
• Most of their reports are not thorough (8-20 pages) while our reports are extremely detailed (usually 60-120 pages), including sensitivity analysis, and several strategies on how to comply. Also their reports are run by Certified Energy Managers (who do not fully understand the buildings) while ours are run by Licensed Mechanical Engineers with decades of experience.
• We will have meetings/Zoom with all stakeholders at no extra charge, while many other engineering firms charge as much as $200-$300/hr, because we want these buildings to comply by lowering their emissions, and become more energy efficient while avoiding up to millions of dollars in penalties.
• We are one of the leading LL97 consultants running engineering studies in over 6 million sqft.