Latest DC Benchmarking Trends
Uncover trends that are shaping DC’s building energy performance and look ahead at potential BEPS relief options.
Created in partnership with Building Innovation Hub
Overview
Benchmarking helps building owners, investors, and tenants track and compare energy and cost performance year-over-year across similar buildings. Through this process, they can identify energy saving opportunities to reduce operating costs and prioritize investments. Benchmarking and disclosure of results to Washington, DC’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) is a precursor to compliance with DC’s Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS).
2026 is the last year of the DC BEPS Compliance Cycle 1 (Cycle 1). 2026 is also the evaluation year for Cycle 1, which means that energy being used in buildings subject to BEPS in 2026 will be used to determine compliance with BEPS. In anticipation of this, building owners and managers have been implementing performance improvements at their buildings during BEPS Cycle 1. The DC building industry is curious as to how buildings will succeed with these requirements.
While we do not have public 2025 or 2026 benchmarking data, we do have public 2024 benchmarking data. The Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington (AOBA) and the Building Innovation Hub (Hub) are interested in this data to help advise our stakeholders and members on how DC building stock are doing with respect to this current BEPS, similar to the 2023 benchmarking data series published in 2025. This year’s benchmarking data series reviewing 2024 data expands the breadth of last year’s series and will seek to provide insight a few questions:
- What additional BEPS relief options might be introduced later this year or early next year for buildings struggling to their BEPS requirements.
- What are the current median ENERGY STAR scores for major building types like offices, multifamily buildings, hotels, and worship facilities?
- How are buildings that did not meet the BEPS making progress on the primary compliance pathways—that is, the Performance and Standard Target Pathways?
- What additional details and insights might we be able to glean from benchmarking data for offices, multifamily, hotels, and worship facilities?
- What should buildings under 50,000 square feet be thinking about in the next year?
We explore this through a multi-part series of analysis below.
Benchmarking Analysis Series
Our 2026 blog series explains local benchmarking trends based on analysis of 2024 data, which is the most recent complete and accurate dataset at the time of this post.
- Part 1: Building Performance Over Time: A Review of ENERGY STAR Medians
- Part 2: A Review of Buildings on the Performance Pathway (to be published the week of June 1)
- Part 3: A Review of Buildings on the Standard Target Pathway (to be published the week of June 1)
Stay tuned for further analysis of performance across different building typologies.
The data used in this analysis was based on publicly available disclosures with supplemental information provided by DOEE to enable the series’ methodology to be based on the evaluation metrics used by DOEE. Notably, the metrics analyzed are different than last year’s data series and cannot therefore be compared directly.
All observations in this series apply generally to the building typologies included in the dataset. Specific buildings will have their own unique challenges and may have different experiences.
Upcoming DC BEPS Relief Options
As the District approaches the end of BEPS Cycle 1, DOEE has been considering updated guidance to help buildings meet the technical requirements. While this series will look at 2024 benchmarking data, it is also important to understand what changes may be coming and what their impact may be. These updates are a result of collaboration between DOEE and multiple building industry partners such as the BEPS Task Force and AOBA. As of today, this series cannot speak to the specific details of each of these relief options since these details haven’t been finalized yet. Additional resources will follow once updated guidance is finalized, so please stay tuned for updates.
| Financial Distress Exemptions |
Per the BEPS Amendment Act of 2024, DOEE is required to develop exemptions for financial distress, with the intent that buildings which meet criteria set by DOEE can apply for a whole-cycle exemption. DOEE included draft criteria in their proposed BEPS Guidebook Revision v1.2 updates which were open for public comment earlier this year. Additional information will be forthcoming in the updated version of the BEPS Guidebook once it is issued by DOEE. |
| Alternative Compliance Agreements |
Formally known as the Alternative Agreement for Building Improvements in the proposed BEPS Guidebook v1.2, this is an alternative enforcement mechanism. If a building does not meet the BEPS, this mechanism would enable DOEE and the building owner to enter into an agreement by which the building owner would invest all or part of an alternative compliance payment that DOEE would levy for a property which is has not met its BEPS requirements at the end of this Cycle into future building improvements in lieu of paying an alternative compliance payment to DOEE. Thus, this mechanism would have buildings invest into improvements in their buildings instead of paying the District if they do not meet their BEPS. Specifics of these agreements are not spelled out in the proposed version of the BEPS Guidebook. Similar to financial distress exemptions, public input was provided and additional information will be forthcoming in the updated version of the BEPS Guidebook. |
| Good Faith Efforts |
This is the least defined of the three relief options, but the concept is explained by the name: credit for this BEPS Cycle for specific actions (or efforts) taken during this BEPS Cycle for properties that were unable to meet the BEPS. A subcommittee of the BEPS Task Force was formed to develop possible formulations of good faith efforts; the subcommittee has produced recommendations for the BEPS Task Force to review. These recommendations were presented on April 21 and are currently with the BEPS Task Force for consideration. The BEPS Task Force would then compile recommendations for DOEE, who could then incorporate either some or all of their recommendations into a Guidebook update later in 2026. |
Public data used in this analysis was pulled from DC’s Energy Benchmarking OpenData and DC’s Building Energy Performance website on February 5, 2026. These databases were provided in .csv formats.
Supplemental data was provided by DOEE on April 2, 2026. The supplemental data included:
- Adjusted Site EUI for 2024 buildings that did not meet the BEPS.
- DC BEPS Scores for buildings over 50,000 square feet from 2019 to 2024.
- Additional space use characteristics for benchmarked buildings, including gross floor areas.
- A corrected pathway selection data set.
- If a building was publicly or privately owned.
- Additional information on if multifamily buildings were either condominiums or affordable housing properties (where affordable housing properties includes both housing with subsidies available and naturally occurring affordable housing). Note that this data may be out of date.
Note that small year-over-year changes in the datasets were observed when comparing last year’s benchmarking series reviewing 2023 data (where data was pulled on March 19, 2025) to this series.
Analysis for the series was done in R by AOBA. Year-over-year building property was tracked by assuming a property keeps the same suffix square lot (SSL) across the BEPS Cycle.
Buildings were filtered based on:
- The EPA calculated primary property type, including offices, multifamily, hotels, and worship facilities.
- For certain articles, an additional filtering criterium was applied: if the primary property type of the building was multifamily, buildings were additional classified on if they were condominiums, affordable housing, or market-rate housing (where market-rate housing was classified based on if the property was neither a condominium nor affordable housing).
- If DOEE listed the benchmarking reporting for the property as “In Compliance”, which indicates DOEE has accepted the benchmarking submission.
- If the building is privately owned.
- If the property has an ENERGY STAR score, which filters out properties unable to obtain an ENERGY STAR score for whatever reason.
- In general: if the reported gross floor area of the building was over 25,000 square feet. In certain instances, if the reported gross floor area of the building was over 50,000 square feet or if the reported gross floor area of the building was between 25,000 and 49,999 square feet. (Tax record square footage data was considered but not used, as benchmarking submissions and corrections that impacted gross floor area would propagate as changes in reported building gross floor area.)
- For buildings over 50,000 square feet:
- If the reporting year of the energy data was 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024.
- For buildings 25,000 to 49,999 square feet:
- If the reporting year of the energy data was 2023 or 2024.
- For buildings where progress toward BEPS was evaluated:
- Building pathway status of Standard Target Pathway or Performance Pathway and their pathway submission was marked “Completed”.
- If the property is on the Performance Pathway: Adjusted Site EUI was greater than zero.
- If the property is on the Standard Target Pathway: DC BEPS score between 1 and 100.