Building performance standard: a local law capping a building's energy use or emissions, tightening over time, with fines for exceeding it.
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A building performance standard is a local law that puts a legal ceiling on how much energy a building may use or how much greenhouse gas it may emit per square foot. The cap tightens on a published schedule — often toward net zero by 2050 — and buildings over the line owe a penalty per tonne or per square foot. Cities aim these laws at their largest existing buildings, because a small slice of big properties is usually the single biggest source of a city's emissions.
The smart-city layer is what makes the cap enforceable: mandatory metering, annual benchmarking and public disclosure of every covered building's energy and water use. New York's Local Law 97 and Boston's BERDO both cap emissions outright; Washington D.C.'s BEPS instead pegs the standard to the local median, so half of each building type always starts below the line. It is the same logic as a low-emission zone — regulate against a measured threshold.
The honest caveat: several flagship laws have built the accounting but not yet collected a cent. Boston's first compliance deadline slipped to August 2026 and New York's fines so far have hit non-filers, not over-emitters — so in the leading cases enforcement is still theoretical. Singapore's incentive-led Green Mark / Super Low Energy scheme shows the softer alternative to a mandatory cap.
Added 2026-08-06 · Part of the growing Smart City Glossary