What does Los Angeles' EBEWE ordinance require of my building?

Two requirements, one program

EBEWE was created by Ordinance No. 184674 and added Division 97 to the Los Angeles Municipal Code, effective January 29, 2017. LADBS runs it in two phases:

• Phase I, benchmarking: an annual report of the building's energy and water use.
• Phase II, audits and retro-commissioning (A/RCx): an energy and water audit and a tune-up of existing systems, due once every five years.

The ordinance applies to privately owned buildings of 20,000 square feet or more (LADBS has clarified that the published code text should be read to include buildings of exactly 20,000 square feet) and to city-owned buildings. The city's own compliance data lists city-owned buildings from 7,500 square feet up. The square footage EBEWE uses is not the gross floor area in Portfolio Manager; if a privately owned building under 20,000 square feet receives a Notice to Comply, LADBS asks the owner to email ladbs.ebewe@lacity.org with documents showing the correct floor area.

Benchmarking: every year by June 1

A covered building must be benchmarked by June 1 every year for the preceding calendar year. The report due June 1, 2025 covered energy and water use for calendar year 2024. LADBS lists the 2025 benchmark year as due June 1, 2026.

The steps, as LADBS describes them:

1. Find the building's LA City Building ID. It is printed on the Notice to Comply and on any non-compliance invoice, and it is different from the Property ID that Portfolio Manager assigns.
2. Enter a year of energy and water data in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, the EPA's free tool, with the LA Building ID recorded as the property's city ID.
3. Register the building with LADBS, pay the annual registration fee and submit the report.

Missing the deadline brings a non-compliance fee of $202 under Section 91.9712. Under Section 98.0411, an invoice unpaid after 30 days adds a 250% late charge and can go to collections, and interest accrues at 12% a year after 60 days. Paying the fee does not make the building compliant, and LADBS posts each building's status publicly.

LADBS states that the ordinance has no penalty for high energy or water use. EBEWE requires measurement and disclosure, not a performance target.

Audits and retro-commissioning: every five years

Phase II is due once every five years on a schedule set by Table 9708.2, keyed to the last digit of the LADBS Building ID. LADBS lists the next due dates as:

• Building IDs ending in 0 or 1: December 1, 2026
• Building IDs ending in 2 or 3: December 1, 2027

Other digits follow the same table. Compliance means registering, paying the A/RCx registration fee (LADBS lists $183 plus a $10.98 development surcharge) and uploading a Declaration of Completion or Exemption signed by a California-licensed engineer or architect.

Exemptions exist. Among them, a building can be exempt from the water A/RCx if a licensed engineer or architect certifies that its water use intensity fell at least 20% compared with the five years before its due date, and some energy exemptions rely on ENERGY STAR certification (LADBS now also accepts ENERGY STAR NextGen certification). A building whose benchmarking used estimated energy data cannot get ENERGY STAR certification, so it cannot use those energy exemptions. The LADBS A/RCx FAQs list every condition.

EBEWE and California's AB 802

California runs its own statewide benchmarking program under AB 802 for buildings over 50,000 square feet. LADBS announced that starting in 2026 the state no longer accepts energy reports from owners whose buildings sit within a local program such as EBEWE, so a Los Angeles building reports to the city. Notices to Comply from LADBS carry the City of Los Angeles seal; AB 802 notices carry the California Energy Commission seal.

How to check a building's status

LADBS points owners to three places:

• the Benchmark Compliance Status lookup (ladbsservices2.lacity.org/EBEWECompliance) for whether a Building ID complied
• the LADBS account used to register the building, for detailed status
• the EBEWE dataset on data.lacity.org, for the publicly disclosed results

That public dataset is what BuildingCensus reads. In the city's 2025 program year it lists 11,241 buildings: 5,965 marked Complied and 5,276 Not Complied. By size class, 6,871 are privately owned buildings of 20,000–49,999 square feet, 2,243 are 50,000–99,999 and 1,552 are 100,000 or more, with the remainder city-owned.

Every Los Angeles building in the dataset has a page on BuildingCensus with its ENERGY STAR score, energy use intensity and emissions where it reported them. Browse the Los Angeles hub or the multifamily housing and office lists.

What the Los Angeles data does and doesn't show

Of the 11,498 Los Angeles buildings BuildingCensus holds, 4,858 have no reported energy figures in their latest year, which is consistent with the large Not Complied share. Of those that report a score, the median ENERGY STAR score is 83.

The LA dataset publishes no building names and no coordinates, so BuildingCensus addresses Los Angeles pages by street address and does not map them. It also gives only the last three digits of the Assessor Identification Number, so search by address.

This guide summarizes the ordinance and LADBS's published guidance; it is not legal or compliance advice. Questions go to ladbs.ebewe@lacity.org.