D.C. lists all buildings subject to energy benchmarking in 2013

The District's energy and water benchmarking deadline approaches. If you happen to own a building 100,000 square feet or larger and still don't know how the law applies to you, the Department of the Environment has released a handy list.

All privately owned buildings 200,000 square feet or larger will have to provide benchmarking data on April 1 for 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Buildings 150,000 to 199,999 square feet must submit 2011 and 2012 data, and buildings between 100,000 and 149,999 square feet need to supply only 2012 data.

Buildings between 50,000 and 99,000 square feet are off the hook for 2013, but will have to submit in 2014.

More than 700 buildings — office and apartment — are subject to this year's benchmarking deadline.

Data will be entered through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's free Energy Start Portfolio and scored. Beginning in 2014, the list of scores will be released publicly, perhaps driving some tenants to more energy-efficient properties and owners of less efficient buildings to upgrade.

Important to note: Even if a basement or below-grade parking garage does not count toward your building's gross square footage, the energy data for those areas must be entered into Portfolio Manager.

So what are the largest of D.C.'s large buildings subject to the benchmarking law? We're not including, of course, the Capitol and other gargantuan federal buildings that the District can't force to do anything.

There are only three buildings in D.C. of more than 2 million square feet that can be required to follow the benchmarking law.

The largest is Georgetown University's 3800 Reservoir Road, at 2.74 million square feet, followed by the 2.14 million-square-foot JBG/Federal Center LLC, the most valuable of all privately owned office properties in D.C., based on assessments, and the 2.1 million-square-foot Constitution Center, owned by David Nassif Associates at 400 Seventh St. SW.