DC BEPS, from where you stand today to a filed plan.

Buildings 50,000 sq ft and up have to meet a performance standard, not just report data. Cycle 1 closes with the 2026 calendar year, and the Completed Actions Report is due May 3, 2027.

Dates and thresholds change. We confirm the current requirement for your specific building before anyone acts on it.

BEPS is a standard, and benchmarking is only how it is measured.

Benchmarking tells the District how your building performs. BEPS is the District telling you that performance has to clear a bar. For most scoreable property types that bar is the ENERGY STAR score, and for multifamily the standard sits at 66. Buildings above it are compliant for the cycle. Buildings below it choose a pathway and improve.

There are two main routes. The performance pathway asks for a percentage reduction in energy use over the cycle. The standard target pathway asks you to reach the standard itself. Which one is right depends on how far below the bar you are, what upgrades you have already done, and what your capital plan actually allows, and the choice is locked once the window closes.

Everyone talks about the penalty. In practice the more useful conversation is about the documentation. DOEE has not assessed a single BEPS payment to date, and when one is assessed the mechanism for reducing it is a building improvement agreement, which is negotiated on the record you built during the cycle. Katie Bergfeld at DOEE put it plainly: you do not have to wait on our guidance to start documenting.

The published cap is ten dollars a square foot, and most buildings never get there.

The penalty math is published, and for multifamily it works out to roughly twenty-nine cents per square foot for each point below the standard, up to a ten dollar per square foot ceiling and a program cap. For an eight-point gap on a mid-size condo that is real money, and it is also the exact figure a board needs before it will approve anything.

What we do not do is quote you a running total or imply a payment is inevitable. DOEE has assessed none so far, exemptions exist for demolition, financial distress and low occupancy in the baseline years, and condos and co-ops are named as non-income-producing for the applicable test. We work out which of those doors is actually open for your building before we talk about money.

What a DOEE letter usually means.

Most DC correspondence is one of two things, and neither is a bill.

Send us the letter itself, not a summary. We read it for the six things that decide the response: who sent it, which building and identifier it names, what period it covers, what it says you failed to do, the cure date, and whether it is a first notice or an escalation. We never quote a running penalty total, and we cure first, then talk to the regulator.