New York City Says 95% of Large Buildings Meet Emissions Limits
Photo by Hannah Busing
NEW YORK — About 95% of large privately owned buildings in New York City subject to the city’s landmark climate law are meeting their greenhouse-gas emissions limits in the first year of enforcement, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s administration said.
The Department of Buildings said roughly 20,000 private properties are covered by Local Law 97, which requires large buildings to meet increasingly stringent emissions limits. About 95% filed the required compliance reports, and about 95% of buildings using the law’s performance-based compliance pathway met their emissions targets, according to the administration.
Buildings account for about two-thirds of the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions, making energy-efficient retrofits, electrification and renewable-energy installations central to New York City’s climate strategy.
“Climate change is not a problem for someone else to solve someday,” Mamdani said in a statement. “It is here in New York City, and our buildings are where we both have a responsibility and an enormous opportunity to act.”
Building owners may also comply with the law by purchasing offset certificates through the city’s Affordable Housing Reinvestment Fund. The fund has collected about $1.7 million so far for decarbonization work in affordable-housing buildings, the administration said.
The city also said its relaunched NYC Accelerator program, a free technical-assistance service for building owners and managers, has helped nearly 700 properties since April. Of those, 448 are using the program’s online Momentum platform for compliance calculations, project planning and retrofit management.
The next phase of the NYC Carbon Challenge includes 127 private and nonprofit organizations representing nearly 600 million square feet of real estate, according to the administration. Participating institutions have collectively avoided nearly 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions, it said.
City buildings and schools
City-owned operations reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 31% between 2006 and 2025, reaching their lowest level in two decades, according to the administration.
Over the past 12 years, the city has completed more than 17,800 energy-conservation measures at 2,500 facilities. Those projects reduced an estimated 460,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — roughly equivalent to removing 100,000 cars from the road, the city said.
The city has installed nearly 36 megawatts of solar capacity at 222 public facilities, including 29 megawatts at 138 public schools. Another 78 school solar projects are underway through the NYC Solar Schools program.
Earlier this year, NYC Public Schools and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services completed the city’s first solar-canopy electric-vehicle charging installation at The Michael J. Petrides School on Staten Island. In 2025, the school system also completed the city’s first conversion of a school boiler system to 100% biofuel at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.
More than 1,600 teachers and 19,000 students have received training through the NYC Solar Schools program as of 2026, the administration said.
Affordable-housing initiatives
The New York City Housing Authority plans to install clean electric heating and cooling systems in 20,000 apartments over the next five years under its Sustainability Agenda, released in April.
NYCHA also plans to install 10,000 induction stoves, 30 megawatts of solar capacity and 150 electric-vehicle charging stations across its campuses. Other planned work includes electrifying domestic hot-water systems, replacing windows and improving insulation.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development said it supports 60 affordable-housing projects built to Passive House standards. Solar panels on affordable-housing developments generate about 17 megawatts of energy, the agency said.
HPD has also funded heat-pump installations for nearly 2,800 households in 70 existing buildings, according to the administration.
Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said the results showed that owners of large buildings are moving toward compliance with the city’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Through our smart implementation of Local Law 97 carbon emission limits, DOB and our agency partners are helping tens of thousands of the city’s largest buildings get on a manageable compliance pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050,” Tigani said.