The statute
NYC Admin Code §28-320.6 sets the penalty for exceeding a building's annual emissions limit: a civil penalty of not more than the difference between the report's emissions and the building emissions limit, in metric tons of CO2 equivalent, times $268 — per year. It is a ceiling, and DOB's rule assesses at that maximum (1 RCNY §103-14(h)), with statutory mitigating factors a tribunal "shall give due regard to" (§28-320.6.1). That is why every number on this page —and in our calculator — is an estimated maximum: only the NYC Department of Buildings determines an actual penalty.
Input 1 — your limit
A building's annual emissions limit is its floor area times an emissions factor for its property type, summed across the uses in the building: B = Σ (factork × floor areak) (1 RCNY §103-14(d)(2), Equation 103-14.1).
The factors come from the rule's property-type tables — one value per ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® property type for 2024–2029 (1 RCNY §103-14(c)(3)(i)) and a lower one for 2030–2034 (§103-14(c)(3)(iii)). These adopted tables supersede the occupancy-group limits printed in the statute (§28-320.3.1/.3.2) — a common source of stale numbers in older articles. For CY2024 and CY2025 reports only, an owner could elect the statutory occupancy-group limit where it was greater than the assigned property-type factor (§103-14(c)(3)(ii)).
| Office | 2024–2029: 0.00758 · 2030–2034: 0.00269 tCO2e/sf (1 RCNY §103-14(c)(3)) |
|---|---|
| Multifamily Housing | 2024–2029: 0.00675 · 2030–2034: 0.00335 tCO2e/sf (1 RCNY §103-14(c)(3)) |
Input 2 — your emissions
Reported emissions are the building's actual annual energy use — electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, district steam — converted to tCO2e using the coefficients in the rule (1 RCNY §103-14(d)(3)). The coefficients are per unit of energy, so the only building-specific input is the utility data itself: twelve months of it, complete, for the calendar year being reported.
The rule then allows specific deductions before comparison against the limit — renewable energy credits and clean-power purchases, qualifying electric-vehicle charging treatment, and beneficial-electrification credit for qualifying electric heat (1 RCNY §103-14(d)(4)). Each has its own evidence requirements; none of them are automatic.
A worked example
Take a 100,000-square-foot office building that emitted 900 tCO2e in the reporting year.
| 2024–2029 limit | 0.00758 × 100,000 = 758 tCO2e |
|---|---|
| 2024–2029 exposure | 900 − 758 = 142 tons over → 142 × $268 = $38,056 per year (estimated maximum) |
| 2030–2034 limit | 0.00269 × 100,000 = 269 tCO2e |
| 2030–2034 exposure | 900 − 269 = 631 tons over → 631 × $268 ≈ $169,100 per year (estimated maximum) |
Same building, same energy use — the estimated maximum exposure roughly quadruples in 2030 because the office factor drops to about a third of its 2024–2029 value. This is the single most important fact in LL97 planning: compliance today says little about 2030, and retrofit decisions made now should be sized against the 2030 limit, not the current one.
(Figures above use the adopted-rule factors at full precision — 0.002690852 for the 2030–2034 office factor — rounded here for readability. The calculator uses the unrounded values.)
Penalties this formula does not cover
The $268/ton mechanics apply to Article 320 buildings over their annual limit. Filing late is a separate accrual — up to gross floor area × $0.50 per month (§28-320.6.2; §103-14(g)(1)) — and Article 321 buildings (more than 35% rent-regulated units, HDFC co-ops, and certain others) face fixed rule-level penalties instead of the per-ton formula, because the $268/ton penalty never applies to them (§28-320.1; 1 RCNY §103-17). Both are covered in the guides below.