BERDO reporting is the annual submission of a building's energy and water use to the City of Boston under the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, due by May 15 each year for the previous calendar year. Since the 2021 amendment known as BERDO 2.0, the ordinance does two things: it requires covered buildings to report, and it sets emissions standards, in kilograms of CO2e per square foot, that each building must meet or pay for. The standards took effect in 2025 for larger buildings and apply from 2030 to the rest, and they step down every five years to zero in 2050.
For a property manager the ordinance is two separate jobs with two separate deadlines: the reporting job, which is data collection, benchmarking and, every five years, third-party verification; and the compliance job, which is keeping the building under its emissions standard or choosing between the alternative compliance payment, renewable energy purchases and a reduction plan. This guide covers both, with the Boston emissions standards for the main building types, the payment mechanics, the verification rules and a timeline.
Last reviewed: September 2026, against the City of Boston's BERDO page and the BERDO 2.0 ordinance and regulations.
BERDO at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is BERDO? | Boston's Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance; BERDO 2.0 (2021) added binding emissions standards to the original reporting requirement |
| Which buildings are covered? | Non-residential buildings of 20,000 sq ft or more; residential buildings with 15 or more units; parcels with multiple buildings totalling 20,000 sq ft or 15 units |
| When did emissions standards start? | 2025 for buildings of 35,000 sq ft or more (or 35 or more units); 2030 for buildings of 20,000 to 35,000 sq ft (15 to 34 units) |
| When is reporting due? | May 15 each year, covering the previous calendar year |
| What is the multifamily standard? | 4.1 kgCO2e/sf (2025–2029), falling to 2.4 (2030–2034) and to 0 in 2050 |
| What is the office standard? | 5.3 kgCO2e/sf (2025–2029), falling to 3.2 (2030–2034) and to 0 in 2050 |
| What if the building is over its standard? | Pay the alternative compliance payment of $234 per metric ton over, buy eligible renewable energy, or follow an approved reduction plan |
| How often is verification required? | Third-party verification in the first reporting year of the standards and every fifth year after (2026, 2031, 2036 and so on for large buildings) |
| What are the fines? | Up to $1,000 a day for non-compliance and $300 a day for non-reporting on buildings of 35,000 sq ft or more; $300 and $150 a day for the smaller tier |
Covered buildings
BERDO applies to non-residential buildings of 20,000 square feet or more, residential buildings with 15 or more units, and any tax parcel where several buildings together reach 20,000 square feet or 15 units. The City maintains the list of covered buildings and notifies owners; a building that is not on the list but meets the thresholds is still covered, and the owner is expected to report.
The size tiers matter for timing. Buildings of 35,000 square feet or more, or with 35 or more residential units, have been subject to the emissions standards since the 2025 reporting year. Buildings between 20,000 and 35,000 square feet, or with 15 to 34 units, report now and become subject to the standards from 2030. Both tiers have reported energy use since the original ordinance; what changed under BERDO 2.0 is that the number now has a consequence.
Details of coverage, exemptions and the covered buildings list are on the City of Boston's BERDO page.
Reporting vs emissions standards
The two obligations are easy to run together and should be kept apart.
Reporting is the annual submission of twelve months of whole-building energy and water data (every fuel and every utility account, including tenant-metered accounts, which Eversource and National Grid supply in aggregate on request) through Energy Star Portfolio Manager to the City by May 15. It applies to every covered building every year, whether or not the building is subject to the standards yet, and it is the same exercise the original 2013 ordinance required. The City publishes the reported data.
The emissions standard is the cap. Each year, the City calculates the building's emissions from the reported energy using the emissions factors it publishes for that year (a factor per kWh of grid electricity, per therm of gas, per unit of oil and steam), divides by the building's gross floor area, and compares the result with the standard for the building's use type. A building at or under its standard has complied. A building over it has three ways to close the gap, described below.
A building can therefore be fully compliant with reporting and non-compliant with the standard, or the reverse. The fines are separate too: non-reporting carries its own daily fine, and exceeding the standard without paying or planning carries a larger one.
The Boston emissions standards by building type
The BERDO 2.0 emissions standards are set per building use, in kilograms of CO2e per square foot per year, for five-year periods, and reach zero for every use in 2050. Mixed-use buildings apply a weighted standard by the floor area of each use. The table gives the first two periods for the main use types; the full schedule for every use type and period is in the City's BERDO regulations.
| Building use | 2025–2029 (kgCO2e/sf) | 2030–2034 (kgCO2e/sf) | Reduction at 2030 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multifamily housing | 4.1 | 2.4 | 41% |
| Office | 5.3 | 3.2 | 40% |
| Education (K-12) | 3.9 | 2.4 | 38% |
| Healthcare | 15.4 | 10.0 | 35% |
| Retail | 5.4 | 3.3 | 39% |
| Services | 5.4 | 3.3 | 39% |
| Storage | 5.4 | 3.3 | 39% |
| Lodging | 5.8 | 3.5 | 40% |
| Assembly | 7.8 | 4.6 | 41% |
| College / university | 10.2 | 5.3 | 48% |
| Technology / science | 19.2 | 11.1 | 42% |
| Food sales and food service | 17.4 | 10.9 | 37% |
| Manufacturing / industrial | 23.9 | 15.3 | 36% |
The later steps continue at roughly the same rate. For office the full path is 5.3, 3.2, 2.4, 1.6, 0.8 and 0 across the six periods to 2050; for multifamily it is 4.1, 2.4, 1.8, 1.1, 0.6 and 0. Every use reaches zero in 2050, which means the standards are not a target to meet once but a slope to stay on, and a building that is comfortably under its 2025 standard with gas heating will not be under its 2035 standard without electrification.
Worked example: a 100,000 sq ft Boston office
Take a 100,000 square foot office with 1,500,000 kWh of electricity and 4,000 MMBtu of natural gas a year. The illustration uses an electricity factor of 0.29 kgCO2e per kWh and a gas factor of 53.1 kgCO2e per MMBtu; use the City's published factors for the reporting year in a real calculation.
| 2025–2029 | 2030–2034 | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard: 100,000 sf × kgCO2e/sf | 5.3 → 530.0 tCO2e | 3.2 → 320.0 tCO2e |
| Electricity: 1,500,000 kWh × 0.29 kg | 435.0 t | 435.0 t (before grid improvement) |
| Gas: 4,000 MMBtu × 53.1 kg | 212.4 t | 212.4 t |
| Building emissions | 647.4 tCO2e | 647.4 tCO2e |
| Over the standard | 117.4 t | 327.4 t |
| Alternative compliance payment at $234/t | $27,472 a year | $76,612 a year |
The building is over its standard from the first year, and the payment nearly triples at 2030 with no change to the building. The electricity factor will fall as the Massachusetts grid decarbonises, which helps the electricity line, but the gas line is fixed until the heating system changes.
Alternative compliance payments
A building over its standard has three compliance routes, and they can be combined.
The BERDO alternative compliance payment is $234 per metric ton of CO2e over the standard, paid to the City's Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which funds emissions reduction projects in environmental justice neighbourhoods. It is the default: a building that does nothing else pays it. It is not a fine; it is a compliance mechanism, and paying it keeps the building compliant for that year. It is also uncapped and annual, so a building that is 300 tonnes over pays about $70,000 a year, every year, until it reduces.
Renewable energy purchases can offset emissions from electricity. BERDO recognises Massachusetts Class I renewable energy certificates and power purchase agreements that meet the City's criteria, and the City runs a REC connector programme with a purchase deadline each year (31 October in the current cycle). RECs offset electricity emissions only; they cannot offset gas, oil or steam.
An individual compliance schedule, or a hardship compliance plan, lets an owner propose a building-specific path to the standard where the standard cannot be met on time, subject to the BERDO Review Board's approval. Portfolio owners can also apply for a portfolio compliance schedule that averages across buildings. These routes require a plan with dates, not a request for time.
Third-party verification
BERDO 2.0 requires the reported data to be verified by a qualified third party in the building's first year subject to the standards and every fifth year after: for the 35,000 square foot tier, the verification years are 2026, 2031, 2036, 2041 and 2046. The verifier is an independent professional from the City's list of qualified verifiers who checks the building's reported energy use against utility records, the floor area and use-type allocation, and the Portfolio Manager set-up, and attests that the submission is accurate.
Verification is a paid engagement with a lead time, and it is where data problems surface: a tenant account missing from the whole-building total, a floor area that does not match the assessor's record, a use type allocation that puts a ground-floor restaurant under "office". Owners in a verification year should have the data assembled and reconciled by March, not May.
Timeline
| When | What | Who |
|---|---|---|
| January to March | Collect twelve months of utility data for every account and fuel, including tenant-metered accounts via the utilities' aggregate data services; reconcile to bills; confirm floor area and use types | Property manager |
| March to April (verification years) | Engage a qualified third-party verifier; provide utility records, floor plans and Portfolio Manager access | Property manager, verifier |
| By May 15 | Submit the annual report through Energy Star Portfolio Manager to the City | Owner or manager |
| May to July | City calculates emissions against the standard and notifies the owner of the result | City of Boston |
| Summer | Decide the compliance route for any exceedance: pay the alternative compliance payment, purchase eligible RECs, or apply for an individual compliance schedule | Owner |
| By October 15 | Reporting deadline for buildings granted an extension | Owner or manager |
| By October 31 | REC purchase deadline through the City's connector programme, for the current cycle | Owner |
| Year-round | Track consumption monthly against the standard so the next year's position is known before May | Property manager |
For the 20,000 to 35,000 square foot tier, the same calendar applies to reporting now, and the standards, payments and verification join it from the 2030 reporting year.
Data collection in the system
The report is twelve months of consumption for every utility account and fuel serving the building, and the verification checks that consumption against the bills. Both are easier when the consumption is recorded as the bills arrive rather than reconstructed in April.
In RIOO on NetSuite, the utility asset and meter management module holds the building's utility accounts and meters and records consumption from utility bills and meter reads, with the fuel type and units on every reading. Tenant-metered consumption comes through the same resident utility billing records that produce the tenant charges, so the whole-building total is in one place. That consumption record, by account and by month, is what the Portfolio Manager submission and the verifier's reconciliation are built from. For the New York equivalent of this process, see our Local Law 97 compliance guide; for how the same data serves investor ESG reporting, see utility data for ESG reporting.
Frequently asked questions
Q1. What is BERDO 2.0?
Boston's 2021 amendment to the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance. The original 2013 ordinance required large buildings to report energy and water use; BERDO 2.0 added binding emissions standards by building use that took effect in 2025 for buildings of 35,000 square feet or more and apply from 2030 to buildings of 20,000 to 35,000 square feet, stepping down to zero emissions in 2050.
Q2. When is the BERDO deadline?
May 15 each year, for the previous calendar year's energy and water data, submitted through Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Buildings granted an extension have until October 15. Eligible renewable energy certificates for the year must be purchased through the City's connector programme by October 31 in the current cycle.
Q3. What is the BERDO alternative compliance payment?
$234 per metric ton of CO2e by which a building's emissions exceed its standard, paid to the City's Equitable Emissions Investment Fund. Paying it keeps the building compliant for that year. It is annual and uncapped; a building 117 tonnes over pays about $27,500, and one 327 tonnes over pays about $76,600.
Q4. What are the Boston emissions standards for multifamily and office buildings?
Multifamily housing: 4.1 kgCO2e per square foot for 2025 to 2029, 2.4 for 2030 to 2034, then 1.8, 1.1, 0.6 and 0 in 2050. Office: 5.3 for 2025 to 2029, 3.2 for 2030 to 2034, then 2.4, 1.6, 0.8 and 0 in 2050.
Q5. Does BERDO require third-party verification?
Yes. Reported data must be verified by a qualified third party in the building's first year under the emissions standards and every fifth year after that (2026, 2031, 2036 and so on for the 35,000 square foot tier). The verifier reconciles reported energy use to utility records, floor area and use-type allocation.
Related reading
- Local Law 97 compliance guide for building owners and managers
- Utility data for ESG reporting: collecting it from your property system
- Commercial building energy audits: what a manager must arrange
- NetSuite utility billing and meter management
- Sustainable living: eco-friendly practices for multi-family properties
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