DC moved every BEPS deadline a year — and added a hardship exemption
DC moved every BEPS deadline a year — and added a hardship exemption
2026-09-09 · District of Columbia · Compliance
Every District of Columbia condominium and cooperative building large enough to be covered by Building Energy Performance Standards got an extra year, a later annual filing date, and — for the first time — a way out on hardship grounds. The Building Energy Performance Standards Amendment Act of 2024 took effect on March 21, 2025.1
BEPS is the largest single compliance burden District law places on multifamily buildings, and it is enforced by a payment measured against the whole building's square footage. A year is not a detail.
What the measure does
The benchmarking deadline moved to May 1. Amending D.C. Code § 6-1451.03(c)(2), the Act shifts the annual energy and water benchmarking report from April 1 to May 1. Third-party verification frequency changes from every three years to “In 2024, 2027, and every 6 years thereafter.”
The compliance cycles slid a year. Amending § 8-1772.21, the second BEPS cycle moves from January 1, 2027 to January 1, 2028, and the third from January 1, 2033 to January 1, 2034. The cycle that began January 1, 2021 gets six years to comply rather than five, the Act stating that this “include[s] a one-year delay of compliance due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.”
A new whole-cycle exemption. A new § 8-1772.21(e)(1A) allows an exemption where the owner demonstrates “financial distress, [or that] the qualifying building was below sufficient occupancy thresholds for either of the 2 years preceding the compliance cycle.”
“Penalties” became “payments.” Alternative compliance penalties are renamed alternative compliance payments, and DOEE is authorized to write rules letting owners recover all or part of a payment from their non-residential tenants.
Who this reaches, and when
The first cycle covers privately owned buildings of 50,000 square feet or more; the second pulls in buildings above 25,000 square feet. For a residential condominium or cooperative, the applicable standard is the multifamily-housing target — an ENERGY STAR score of 66, or a source energy use intensity of 110.7 — set from 2019 benchmarking data at the local median for the property type.2
Cycle 1 runs January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2026. Retrofits were to be complete by December 31, 2025; the Completed Actions Report is due April 1, 2027, and final energy data with third-party verification by May 1, 2027. DOEE begins assessing Cycle 1 outcomes in 2027.
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