Local Law 97 Q&A With DOB Ahmed Tigani

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New York’s biggest landlords are at a sustainability crossroads.

Local Law 97 requires most buildings over 25,000 square feet to meet tightening greenhouse gas emissions limits or face steep fines — $268 for every ton of carbon above a building’s limit.

For many properties, the law took effect in 2024, with the first compliance reports due at the end of last year. The Department of Buildings, which oversees the process, is now sorting through the first wave of data to shape how to implement the climate law going forward.

“This year is a big year for us to get the data we need to figure out what the future looks like,” DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said in a recent interview with The Real Deal.

I sat down with Tigani to discuss how the agency is approaching the law, and what comes next. This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Where do things stand with Local Law 97?

It’s a world that we have been building and, actually, strongly staffed over the last couple of years. From an implementation perspective, we’ve seen really high compliance rates in phase one. It’s over 91 percent. We are in the process of contacting folks who have not yet fulfilled their responsibilities in this first phase and trying to work with them to figure out if any of the options that we have [can make them] successful. For phase two, and looking forward, the city is pushing things like renewing J-51 and other financing tools to help buildings meet that goal. We’re also conducting additional study to see what we can do as a city to better prepare people for phase two.

What other financing tools are you referring to?

If you are an affordable housing project, HPD has over the last couple of years tried to develop term sheet financing packages that tackle the housing goal but also provide sustainability retrofits support to get where you want to go. We’ve worked on the offset program, which does two things: it helps people meet their obligations, but it creates more funding that’s available through energy retrofits through HPD. We are talking to the financing community to see what other signals and support they need on the regulatory side to help these buildings.

Property owners are anxious to learn more about what the process for potential penalties looks like if they are out of compliance. How will that work?

There are details laid out in the law. But as I’ve mentioned, this year we’ve contracted additional technical support to do research on how we should be framing this in the future. The rules that we have give us room to try to figure out how to make this work, and for us, the key is compliance over penalties. Penalties do not get us the same outcomes. We’re working with individual industries, like hospitals and industrial manufactures to residential buildings, to try and figure out how to shape this for each of them.

When do you hope to have more clarity on those processes?

We are right now contacting owners who haven’t done their reporting. If they do not respond then there are Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings summonses that are sent out. And that will probably become more apparent over the next couple months. And then what we’re hearing from the industry long-term is: ‘Are you looking at whether this is the right framework? What will future penalties look like?’ That’s what a lot of the research is getting into.

What areas of the building code do you think could use some updates?

Future iterations of the energy code are going to be very important in thinking about how it aligns with our Local Law 97 goals. Each one of our codes have both a responsibility to keep up with the latest technology, but also we need to be looking at the cost efficiency of maintaining these buildings at a time when costs are rising. Not any one particular of those codes, but all of them. Our code committee experts are going to be invaluable in thinking about that.

Are you paying attention to where changes to the state’s climate laws land? Especially when it comes to energy code changes?

We are absolutely paying close attention as a city. The Mayor’s Office of Environmental and Climate Justice obviously takes a significant lead in setting the tone. From our perspective, and this is part of the research that we’re digging into with the first phase of compliance reports [for Local Law 97], we are looking at energy usage. We are looking at what kind of work people are doing in order to comply. We believe that greening and making a sustainable city is important. We believe that there are strategies to get there. We are putting the data together now on how people are doing that to show a path forward.

On a lighter note, do you have a favorite building in the city?

There are two buildings for two very different reasons. I really like the New York Society for Ethical Culture building. Both on the outside and the inside. I think they have one of the most beautiful auditoriums and public assembly spaces in the city. And then, I really, really like Sendero Verde in East Harlem, and that’s more personal. I worked on that starting in the Manhattan Borough President’s Office. It’s one of the first and largest Passive House projects, the number of units we were able to produce and negotiate affordability. It just hit a lot for me.