SPECIAL EDITION: FALL 2026
Welcome to a special Fall edition of Touch Base. Instead of revisiting the calendar, this edition focuses on the lessons that matter most in assisting building owners. Benchmarking, Building Performance Standards (BPS), and the growing layer of verification and disclosure rules around them each have their list of challenges. Regulations are already difficult to understand and handling the complicated data associated with compliance creates even more of a challenge. What follows is what we'd want any owner to take away: how benchmarking data gets used once it leaves your hands, why the years before a BPS deadline are the most valuable ones you'll get, and what recent program changes across the country signal about where these requirements are heading.
Below are any remaining deadlines left for the year:
Remaining Jurisdictions
Benchmarking: What Now That the Big Wave Has Passed
For most covered buildings, the 2026 benchmarking season is effectively over with only a few jurisdictions left to close out the year such as Milwaukee, Colorado, and Lakewood. That's good news, but it is only the beginning of the process; the weeks after you file are where errors get caught, records get organized, and next year's filing gets easier.
Your Data is a Starting Point, Not a Finish Line
At this moment, the data on your building is better than it has been at any other point this year. Twelve months of meter reads, a floor area someone checked and verified, space-use details that match how the building operates today. That took real work and efforts to coordinate. For most owners it gets used once for the benchmarking report and then sits untouched until next spring when the whole process begins again.
That is not good, because most of what you will have to decide about the building over the next few years runs off these same numbers. If your jurisdiction has a Building Performance Standard, your target gets measured against a baseline year, and that baseline year is utilized in the report you just filed. This is the time to confirm the numbers are correct rather than after the target is set. If you own a portfolio of buildings, lining them up against their targets shows you which ones need capital soon and which ones can wait. Utility incentive applications, energy audits, retro-commissioning studies, exemption and extension filings, ENERGY STAR certification scores of 75 or better; they all want the same inputs you just spent months pulling together. Lenders and prospective tenants ask for the data too and they are not necessarily interested in whether the filing was accepted.
If Your Building Missed Its Deadline
Missing a benchmarking deadline is rarely the end of the story. Most jurisdictions accept late submissions, and many waive or reduce penalties for a building's first year of noncompliance or for owners who file voluntarily before enforcement begins. The best move is to file as soon as you're able, document why the deadline was missed, and ask the program's compliance help desk about grace periods. Many jurisdictions, including Denver and West Hollywood, run dedicated help desks for owners working through this.
Common 2026 Filing Mistakes Worth Fixing Now
- Understated gross floor area — basements, mechanical rooms, and enveloped space left out of the total.
- Space-use misclassification — a mixed-use building coded as 100% office or 100% retail.
- Incomplete meter data — fewer than 12 full calendar months, or a meter left out entirely in a multi-meter building.
- Outdated operating-hours, occupancy, or worker-count inputs that no longer reflect how the building is actually used.
Three Things Worth Doing Now
Featured Article: Why Data Verification Is More Important Than You Think
If you've already filed your 2026 benchmarking report, it's tempting to consider the year's compliance work done. But for a growing number of jurisdictions, submitting the report is only half the job — making sure the data is accurate is the other half, and it matters even more as jurisdictions begin BPS reporting.
What Data Verification Actually Means
At its simplest, data verification means confirms the numbers in your benchmarking submission — gross floor area, energy use by fuel type, space-use details like operating hours or occupancy — match reality and match your underlying records. Touchstone IQ for Buildings includes an automated Data Quality Checker that flags anomalies such as implausible floor areas or gaps in a building's 12 months of meter data. Automated data checks are fantastic, but it's self-service: it flags issues, it doesn't fix them and confirm the data is accurate. A data verification takes a deep look at the data and verifies if the building’s energy usage is accurately represented, which can result in a building not having to make as many reductions to meet a BPS target.
Many jurisdictions require third-party verification on a recurring cycle where an independent verification from a licensed engineer, architect, or certified energy manager reviews the submission against source documents and signs an attestation. New York City's Local Law 97 requires a Registered Design Professional to specifically certify gross floor area, a reminder that jurisdictions have strict requirements regarding the verification of energy benchmarking data. Most jurisdictions require a data verification to be done by a third-party licensed professional to ensure data is not being misrepresented in the verification.
Why Accuracy Matters More Than It Looks Like It Should
A benchmarking report with the wrong gross floor area doesn't just risk a compliance question — it distorts the building's Energy Use Intensity (EUI) or emissions, which many programs use as the basis for compliance determinations. The most common errors aren't complicated: understated floor area, misclassified space use, incomplete meter data, and inaccurate operating-hours or occupancy inputs that skew the data. None of these will necessarily stop a report from being accepted but they can produce a number that doesn't reflect how the building actually performs.
The consequences aren't only theoretical but can significantly impact the size of penalties. Boston can fine an owner $1,000 to $5,000 when a third-party verifier identifies inaccurate data that isn't corrected, on top of separate penalties for missed deadlines and targets. New York City can audit any submitted Local Law 84 report. A bad EUI or benchmarking data can affect far more than compliance status, it can influence financing terms, tenant perception, and a building's portfolio standing.
The benchmarking numbers a building reports today don't just get filed and forgotten, they become the baseline a current and future performance target gets measured against. That means an error in a year of benchmarking data isn't a one-time inconvenience. An understated floor area or inflated EUI or emissions baked into a building's official record now could set an unrealistically difficult performance target years down the road, once a jurisdiction's Building Performance Standard targets begin.
Data errors tend to be the biggest error discovered when a new portfolio is benchmarked and verified. When Touchstone IQ analyzes new portfolios, we find that over 50% of the portfolios have data errors with their benchmarking reporting inflating fines and skewing Building Performance Standard targets. Other providers have benchmarking be an add-on service and not focused on compliance, this is where other providers create the most errors for building owners.
Why You Should Care
Even if your 2026 report is already filed and accepted, it's worth a second look. Touchstone IQ is available to support and assist with important parts of benchmarking reporting. We confirm your gross floor area and space-use classifications are current, especially after any renovation, tenant change, or remeasurement. Data verifications are extremely useful in identifying key energy usage and if the building actually needs to make energy reductions. If your jurisdiction doesn't require third-party verification, don't assume that means accuracy doesn't matter. Treat verification as an ongoing habit tied to your building's data, not a one-time box to check at filing time.
Building Performance Standards: Preparing While You Still Have Runway
Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards often get talked about together, but they aren't the same requirement. Benchmarking is a reporting obligation — measure your energy use and disclose it. A BPS goes further by setting an actual energy-use or emissions target your building must meet by a specific date, with real penalties if it doesn't.
Nationally, momentum keeps building: Touchstone IQ is tracking several active BPS laws in the U.S. today, part of a broader wave of jurisdictions nationwide that have adopted or are actively considering adopting benchmarking and BPS. Several major programs had notable developments this summer. The State of California has released a draft report proposing the adoption of a statewide BPS law. The City of Lakewood passed a benchmarking ordinance this year with plans to evolve into a BPS program in the future. Jurisdictions around the country have also seen the impact of BPS and are actively developing programs of their own to improve their communities energy efficiency.
Why You Should Get Ahead on BPS Compliance
Every Building Performance Standard has a deadline attached to it, and it's natural to treat that date the way you'd treat it as any regulatory filing by preparing when it gets close. That instinct works reasonably well for benchmarking, which is mostly a data-reporting exercise. It works much less well for BPS, where the requirement isn't paperwork, it's the building's actual energy performance.
Why “Later” Gets More Expensive
A benchmarking report can be pulled together in a matter of weeks once the underlying utility data is in hand. Meeting an energy or emissions target is a different kind of project entirely with equipment replacements, envelope upgrades, controls retrofits, an electrification plan or evaluating alternative compliance options. All of that takes time to scope, budget, permit, and execute. The owners with the most flexibility are the ones who start modeling their energy gap against the target years before the deadline, while there's still time to sequence capital work around planned tenant turnover, existing capital budgets, and available utility incentives. Waiting until the target year arrives collapses strategic planning into a compressed, expensive window to complete projects. Waiting is a major reason owners end up choosing an alternative compliance payment over an actual retrofit: not because the payment is cheaper, but because there wasn't enough runway left to complete the project properly and acquire improved energy or emissions data.
Use the Time Between Now and Your Deadline
None of this has to happen at once, and it shouldn't wait until a target year that's still several cycles away. An energy audit or retro-commissioning study run early can surface low-cost, fast-payback fixes long before any mandatory target applies. Capital planning done early can be aligned with rebates, tax incentives, and planned equipment replacement cycles instead of being rushed to beat a filing date. Identifying a genuine performance gap now is what turns a BPS deadline from a compliance emergency into a scheduling decision.
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Looking Ahead
The rest of 2026 still has real dates on the calendar, and several 2027 milestones are close enough to start planning around now.
Remainder of 2026
▸ September 15 — West Hollywood first EBPS reporting and verification; Newton, MA benchmarking
▸ September 30 — Milwaukee, WI benchmarking
▸ November 1 — Colorado's Building Performance Colorado reporting window closes
▸ December 31 — Lakewood, CO's first-ever benchmarking deadline
If your building is in a jurisdiction with BPS reporting in upcoming years, this Fall is the right moment to start benchmarking voluntarily and understanding your energy data.
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Touchstone in the Spotlight
IMN Mid-Market Multifamily Pacific Northwest Conference · Seattle · End of August
Touchstone IQ Takes the Stage at the IMN Mid-Market Multifamily Pacific Northwest Conference
Account Executive Wana Wanamaker presented on Washington's Clean Buildings Performance Standard at the IMN Mid-Market Multifamily Pacific Northwest conference in Seattle. Her message to a room of mid-market owners and operators was simple: the obligation arriving next July is real, and the owners who deal with it early get paid for doing it.
Wana walked the room through what actually applies to their assets. Multifamily over 20,000 square feet is covered, which in this market is roughly a 25-unit building. Multifamily is Tier 2 no matter how large it gets, so a 150,000 square foot property carries the same designation as a 30,000 square foot one. Owners are also on the hook whether or not the state has contacted them. Never receiving a letter, or not finding the property listed in the Clean Buildings Portal, does not mean a building is off the list, and confirming status is the owner's responsibility. Compliance is due July 1, 2027, and the window to apply for an exemption closes January 2, 2027.
The good news, and the part Wana spent most of her time on, is that Tier 2 carries no performance target. Nobody has to hit a number this cycle. The requirements are prescriptive: benchmark the building's energy use, identify its energy use intensity target, and put an energy management plan and an operations and maintenance program in place. Know your numbers and have a plan. Meanwhile, the state pays for early action. Commerce offers $0.30 per square foot for early compliance, and up to $0.75 per square foot for multifamily owners willing to sign an Anti-Displacement Agreement, capped at the cost of compliance, out of a $150 million pool awarded first come, first served. Missing the date instead carries a penalty of up to $0.30 per square foot. On a 60,000 square foot building, that is the difference between an $18,000 penalty and as much as $45,000 back for the same work on the same deadline. That was Wana's central point: whether this reads as a mandate or an opportunity comes down almost entirely to timing.
Washington also behaves differently from the more mature building performance standards owners may already know from New York, Boston, Denver or Washington, D.C. Those programs require years of annual benchmarking reports before any target ever bites, which gives owners a long on-ramp and a lot of feedback along the way. Washington has no annual reporting requirement at all. Instead, everything lands in a single submission on one date, five years apart, which makes it easy to assume there is nothing to do until 2027. The reality is the opposite. A credible submission needs a full year of clean, verified energy data behind it, correct square footage and activity type, and meter configuration that actually matches the building. The exemption window closes six months before the deadline. Incentive funding is first come, first served and will thin out well before the date. Most importantly, the owners who benchmark two or three years early are the ones who find out what their building needs while they can still fold that work into planned equipment replacements and normal capital cycles, rather than writing an emergency check in the last quarter before a deadline. Touchstone IQ assists Washington building owners with navigating the compliance process that works best for them.
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Industry News
ENERGY STAR Completes Move to Department of Energy
ENERGY STAR, the federal infrastructure that powers nearly every benchmarking program in the country, has completed its move from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Energy. The House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill for the 2027 Fiscal Year that designated $33 million in funding to ENERGY STAR. While Congress has not finished the FY 2027 process, there is no concern regarding the final passage of funding for ENERGY STAR.
New ACEEE Report Finds Efficiency Remains the Cheapest Way to Meet Demand
Amid growing attention to data center load growth and electricity costs, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy released a new report making the case that the demand side is still where the largest and cheapest gains are. The report finds that the United States could cut energy costs by an average of $215 billion a year, $4.8 trillion cumulatively by 2050, through a broad package of policy and other efficiency reforms. With highly efficient heat pumps, building and equipment upgrades, buildings can reduce growing peak demand by 20% on average through 2050, with roughly half of all estimated annual savings coming from buildings. This has made energy efficiency upgrades as the cheapest option to drive down future energy costs and demand.
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Your 2026 Compliance Checklist
The value of your compliance program isn't the filing itself — it's whether the data behind it is accurate, and whether you're using it to plan ahead of your building's next requirement instead of reacting to it.
Need a second set of eyes on your benchmarking data, or help mapping your building's path to its next BPS deadline?
Touchstone IQ's compliance and professional services teams can review your submitted data, run a gap analysis against your building's BPS target, and help you choose the right compliance pathway before the calendar forces the decision.
sales@touchstoneiq.com | 303-327-9769 | touchstoneiq.com