The zero-penalty escape hatch

DOB now runs a named Sustainability Enforcement legal unit, and its process begins with a Notice of Deficiency identifying the NOD number and date, the owner, the premises by BBL, BIN and address, the legal basis, the penalty calculation and how to resolve it.

For a failure-to-file NOD there are three options, and the first is the one that matters. DOB describes it as “Correct” — “Resolve with zero penalty by submitting an extension request and the annual emissions report.” The alternatives are Pay and Challenge. All three go through Ticket #17 on the BEAM portal, and “Steps must be taken within 60 days of the Notice Date.”³

So a board that has missed 2026 and then receives an NOD has a sixty-day window in which filing the extension request plus the report resolves the matter at zero. That is a materially different position from the one most boards think they are in, and it is the single most useful actionable fact in this subject.

The over-the-limit NOD is different, and shorter. For exceeding the emissions limit, the options are Correct — “Purchase offsets to cover all or part of the deficiency” — Pay, or Challenge, and “Steps must be taken within 30 days of the Notice Date.” Thirty days, not sixty. And the exceedance penalty is the serious one: 1 RCNY § 103-14(h) sets it as the difference between the limit and actual reported emissions “multiplied by $268.” DOB's worked example produces $59,723.80 for a single year.

Unresolved matters go to a petition at OATH, and “Penalty will be assessed on the building record post trial.”

Which condominiums are covered — including ones that think they are not

Administrative Code § 28-320.1 defines a covered building to include, in DOB's quotation of it:

“(i) a building that exceeds 25,000 gross square feet … or (ii) two or more buildings on the same tax lot that together exceed 50,000 gross square feet …, or (iii) two or more buildings held in the condominium form of ownership that are governed by the same board of managers and that together exceed 50,000 gross square feet”

Clause (iii) is the one that catches garden-style and multi-building condominiums where no single building is over 25,000 square feet. If one board of managers governs buildings totalling over 50,000 square feet, the condominium is covered.

There is a townhouse-style exception at § 28-320.1, exception 2, and it is narrow: real property “not more than three stories, consisting of a series of attached, detached or semi-detached dwellings, for which ownership and the responsibility for maintenance of the HVAC systems and hot water heating systems is held by each individual dwelling unit owner, and with no HVAC system or hot water heating system in the series serving more than 25,000 gross square feet …, as certified by a registered design professional to the department.” Note the last clause: it requires an affirmative certification, not merely the condition being true.

One report for the whole condominium, filed by the board

1 RCNY § 103-14(b)(2):

“Condominium buildings. Building emissions for a covered building held in the condominium form of ownership must be submitted in a single report that includes the emissions for all condominium units in such building. Such report shall be submitted to the Department by the board of managers of such covered building.”

The duty is the board's, expressly. Owners must keep documentation six years under § 103-14(b)(1).

Penalty mitigation exists, and Local Law 88 is a precondition of it

For the 2024–2029 period only, 1 RCNY § 103-14(i) provides mitigation routes. The “good faith efforts” route requires all three of: having filed the annual report and complied with any adjustment; having uploaded benchmarking information under § 28-309.4; and having attested that Article 310 lighting upgrades and Article 311 tenant-space sub-meters are done — plus at least one of six further alternatives, including an approved DOB application for the compliance work, electric-readiness work underway with a utility load letter, a prior year under the limit, or a filed adjustment application.

Read that second condition again: Local Law 88 compliance is a precondition of Local Law 97 penalty mitigation. A board that never filed its lighting and sub-meter reports can lose its mitigation route on LL97 for that reason alone — and LL88 carries its own $1,500 annual penalties under 1 RCNY § 103-18, assessed annually until the report is filed, plus $500 for each covered tenant space lacking a required sub-meter.⁴

There is also a disaster route, which produces a clean result: where “an unexpected or unforeseeable event or condition outside of their control precluded compliance during a calendar year where a building was damaged as a result of a disaster, including but not limited to a hurricane, severe flooding, or fire,” that “may result in a penalty of zero dollars” for the year.

And DOB offers a mediated resolution “when mitigation criteria are not fully met, additional steps or ongoing oversight is needed” — with a warning attached: “Failure to comply with agreement terms may result in back penalties for previously waived years.”

The one 2026 deadline still open

Local Law 33's energy-efficiency label. Per DOB's February 2026 notice, it must be posted “starting October 1 and no later than October 31, 2026” under 1 RCNY § 103-06(l)(2), displayed “within 30 days after October 1st in a conspicuous location near each public entrance to the building until October 1st of the following year.” Multifamily buildings with fewer than 20 units are exempt.

The grade cutoffs: A at 85 or above; B at 70 to under 85; C at 55 to under 70; D below 55; F for buildings that did not submit required benchmarking information; N for exempt buildings.

That F is worth a board's attention. Missing the May 1 benchmarking deadline produces an F, which the board then has to post on its own front door, in public, for a year — in view of residents, prospective purchasers and their brokers. For most boards that is a sharper consequence than the fine.

Two corrections worth carrying

DOB's own February 2026 slides cite the failure-to-file penalty as “N.Y.C. Admin. Code 28-103-14(g).” That citation does not exist; the correct one is 1 RCNY § 103-14(g), which we verified against the rule text. And the widely repeated figure of up to $500,000 for false statements under Admin. Code § 28-320.6.3 is not something we could verify in a primary source, so we are not publishing it as fact.

Our budget approval page covers where compliance capital comes from, and our reserve studies page covers why the reserve line and the emissions line are now the same conversation.