139 East 56th Street

How does 139 East 56th Street compare with other senior living community buildings in New York City?

The latest disclosures cover 296 senior living community buildings in New York City, out of 48,310 buildings citywide. 139 East 56th Street's ENERGY STAR score of 88 compares with an average of 57 across the 229 that report a score; it scores higher than 74% of them and lower than 24%. Its site EUI of 76.4 kBtu/ft² is about 32% below the average of 112.0 kBtu/ft² — it uses less energy per square foot than the typical building in that group. Its emissions intensity of 6.7 kgCO₂e/ft² is about 21% below the group average of 8.5 kgCO₂e/ft².

At 135,689 sq ft, it is about 25% above the average floor area of 108,590 sq ft for those buildings. It was built in 2018, 44 years later than the group's average year built (1974). Across all 24 jurisdictions BuildingCensus covers, the 1,181 senior living community buildings average an ENERGY STAR score of 71 and a site EUI of 73.6 kBtu/ft².

What does an ENERGY STAR score of 88 mean?

ENERGY STAR scores run from 1 to 100 and are computed by the EPA's Portfolio Manager as a percentile against similar buildings nationwide, adjusted for climate, size and use: a score of 88 means the building performs better than about 88% of its national peers. BuildingCensus bands the score into report-card grades; 88 falls in band A — high performer (85–100). Scores of 75 or higher meet the threshold for ENERGY STAR certification; certification itself is a separate, verified application that the disclosure does not record. In New York City, 43% of scored buildings are at 75 or above.

Site energy-use intensity (EUI) is the energy a building uses on site in a year divided by its floor area, in thousand Btu per square foot — lower is more efficient. 139 East 56th Street's 76.4 kBtu/ft² across 135,689 sq ft works out to about 10.4 billion Btu (3,038 MWh-equivalent) in 2024. Its source EUI of 155.2 kBtu/ft² also counts the energy lost generating and delivering that power, which is why it is higher. The disclosure also reports 1,704,423 kWh of electricity, 45,056 therms of natural gas and 3,360 thousand gallons of water for the year.

Which law requires 139 East 56th Street to report its energy use?

139 East 56th Street reports under Local Law 84 (LL84), the legal basis of New York City's Energy and Water Data Disclosure program, which publishes each covered building's annual benchmarking results. The record shown here is the report-year 2024 disclosure (source record nyc:53663392:2024). Under Local Law 97, buildings over 25,000 sq ft face carbon caps with fines of $268 per metric ton of CO₂e over the limit, phasing in from 2024.