The value of a building wellness check

Building energy perfor­mance is not obvious from the outside. To under­stand how well a building is running as a whole, you must take stock of every oper­ating system, from heating to cooling to domestic hot water and elec­tricity. For occu­pants of most New York resi­den­tial build­ings, this ques­tion of building perfor­mance only comes up when some­thing goes wrong. But now, for build­ings subject to Local Law 97 (LL97) which must decar­bonize soon or risk fines, it’s increas­ingly impor­tant to do a well­ness check on all the types of energy used in a building — fuel oil, gas, steam, elec­tricity — to eval­uate the differ­ence between a building’s actual perfor­mance and its poten­tial for energy savings. This proce­dure, called an energy audit, can help chart a course toward better efficiency.

At a Jackson Heights co-op called the Madison, after imple­menting a number of effi­ciency upgrades, the board real­ized there was only so much they could do on their own. So, in 2023, they had the fore­sight to seek outside help and hired consulting firm Bright Power to perform a mid-level inten­sity energy audit for a few thou­sand dollars. 

Matthew Murphey, senior account manager at Bright Power, says he’s seen many build­ings in a similar posi­tion, seeking effi­cient answers for how to improve building oper­a­tions along with resi­dent comfort. “[Co-op and condo members] are coming together once a month at best to try and figure out what to do, and they’re just over­whelmed,” said Murphey. ​“So that’s where we’re really helpful, as a trusted outside consul­tant — we can do all of that extra labor, and then try and deliver it in a really concise format.”

A typical audit begins with audi­tors collecting two years of the building’s utility bills and going on-site for one or more visits to inspect the building and learn about its systems. ​“We look at the inputs on the energy consump­tion side — the bills, specif­i­cally, from the utility — and then we look at the outputs,” Murphey told Skylight, refer­ring to the actual gener­ated heat and cooling in the building and the energy used to create it. ​“You’re using X amount of kilo­watt hours, you’re using X amount of therms, and X amount of gallons of water — what are you getting out of that? How effec­tively are you using all of that energy?”

Next, the Bright Power team inputs all the rele­vant numbers they find into an energy modeling calcu­lator that ​“balances” their obser­va­tions of how energy is being used on the prop­erty with how much energy is actu­ally being used according to the bills. Then, with the typical heating and cooling load of the building in mind, they deter­mine rele­vant retro­fits to recom­mend to the building, which usually can be sorted into three buckets — small, medium, and large lifts — and present the report to shareholders. 

“We’ll meet with the board to go over the results, because it’s a lot, even with the slimmed-down version [of the report],” said Murphey. ​“It’s a lot of infor­ma­tion to digest. We’ll spend as much time as they need after the fact to walk them through the results, listen to their concerns, under­stand what their budgeting is like. And that’s where a lot of the strate­gizing comes around, once they have the numbers to review.”

These conver­sa­tions with boards can be diffi­cult, since audi­tors often must not only explain dozens of pages of dense content, but also deal with board members’ sticker shock at the prices of large-scale clean energy retro­fits. ​“I myself live in a co-op, so I get where co-op members come from when they see some of the numbers,” said Sanel Basic, a manager on the Bright Power audit team. 

At the Madison, though, the energy audit held promising results: The building’s effi­ciency upgrades had paid off. ​“The building actu­ally is performing much better than most of the build­ings that I have seen in the city,” said Alex Philip, project manager for the Madison’s audit. Thanks to the work the board had already accom­plished, the building will not face fines from LL97 until 2035, and the co-op’s Building Energy Efficiency Rating has risen to an A.

Still, there is always more to be done. Bright Power recom­mended a few small-scale retro­fits, like installing low-flow aera­tors in all the building’s faucets to tamp down unnec­es­sary water usage, but its biggest recom­men­da­tions were for big-ticket items like sealing holes in the building enve­lope and replacing its windows. 

While the Madison’s report provided reas­sur­ance and a roadmap, not every building requires a full energy audit — build­ings with staffs that conduct careful data moni­toring might already have all the infor­ma­tion they need to make deci­sions for effi­ciency. With that said, the Bright Power team is adamant that proac­tively finding out how much leeway your prop­erty has before it needs to begin decar­bonizing allows build­ings to plan more effectively. 

“We’re dealing with … people that are late [to real­izing they need to comply with LL97], and it compli­cates the process signif­i­cantly,” said Murphey. ​“If you have the infor­ma­tion now and you don’t have fines until 2030, great — you’ve got five years to save up that piggy bank, if you know you’ve got a million dollar bill that’s poten­tially coming in the next five years.”

For other multi­family prop­er­ties looking to perform their own energy audits, there are many options for consulting firms outside of Bright Power, like Steven Winter Associates, En-Power Group, and EME Group; NYSERDA also offers no-cost home energy assess­ments through inde­pen­dent part­nered contrac­tors for one- to four-family homes and low- and moderate-income housing at the time of publication. 

By auditing now, co-ops and condos can make informed choices that save money, reduce emis­sions, and prepare for upcoming regu­la­tions; build­ings that don’t audit might end up with unex­pected fines, emer­gency retro­fits, or rushed deci­sions about imple­men­ta­tion, lacking requi­site infor­ma­tion about the actual state of their build­ings or projected energy and cost savings. It’s not a neces­sary stop to decar­bonize, but for multi­family build­ings without clarity on next moves, an energy audit can aid informed decision-making. 

“It was a great report,” the Madison’s board pres­i­dent said of the audit. ​“It helped us prioritize.” 

Correction (8÷28÷2025): This article was updated to accu­rately reflect the spelling of an inter­vie­wee’s name. It is Sanel Basic, not Sunel Basic.