US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper

Aggregates annual building energy benchmarking data from 15+ US jurisdictions with mandatory disclosure ordinances — NYC LL84, Chicago, Seattle, Montgomery County MD, Cincinnati, and more. All data lands in a single normalized schema, including site/source EUI, ENERGY STAR Score, GHG emissions, and reporting status.

What It Does

US cities with mandatory benchmarking laws publish their data through open data portals, mostly Socrata SODA v2 APIs. Each city uses slightly different field names, date formats, and coverage. This scraper handles all of that — pulling from each jurisdiction's endpoint, normalizing fields to a consistent schema, and delivering one dataset you can actually use across cities.

You can pull a single jurisdiction or queue them all in a single run.

Who Uses This Data?

ESG analysts pricing carbon risk into REITs, commercial real estate underwriters modeling transition risk, building decarbonization consultants scoping retrofit projects, and climate-tech startups building benchmarking tools. NYC LL97 carbon penalties started hitting in 2025 — the data is no longer academic.

Input

Field	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	Maximum total records to return across all jurisdictions. Default: 15.
jurisdictions	array	List of jurisdiction slugs to scrape. Leave empty to scrape all available.
minYear	integer	Optional. Only return records from this year or later.

Available jurisdiction slugs:

Slug	Source	Records (approx.)
nyc-ll84	NYC Local Law 84 — data.cityofnewyork.us	~28,000
chicago	Chicago Energy Benchmarking — data.cityofchicago.org	~28,000
seattle	Seattle Building Energy Benchmarking — cos-data.seattle.gov	~35,000
montgomery-county-md	Montgomery County MD — data.montgomerycountymd.gov	~5,000
cincinnati	Cincinnati Energy Benchmarking — insights.cincinnati-oh.gov	~600

Output Schema

Each record represents one property disclosure. Fields not available in a given jurisdiction are returned as null.

Field	Type	Description
source_jurisdiction	string	Jurisdiction slug (e.g. nyc-ll84)
data_year	integer	Reporting year
property_id	string	Source-system property identifier
property_name	string	Property name
parent_property_id	string	Parent property ID (campus groupings)
address	string	Street address
city	string	City
state	string	State abbreviation
postal_code	string	ZIP code
latitude	number	Latitude
longitude	number	Longitude
bbl	string	NYC Borough-Block-Lot (NYC LL84 only)
bin	string	NYC Building Identification Number (NYC LL84 only)
primary_property_type	string	EPA property type (Office, Multifamily, K-12 School, etc.)
gross_floor_area_sqft	integer	Total gross floor area in square feet
year_built	integer	Year of original construction
num_buildings	integer	Number of buildings in the property
occupancy_percent	number	Occupancy rate
energy_star_score	integer	ENERGY STAR Score (1-100)
site_eui_kbtu_sqft	number	Site energy use intensity (kBtu/ft2)
source_eui_kbtu_sqft	number	Source energy use intensity (kBtu/ft2)
weather_normalized_site_eui_kbtu_sqft	number	Weather-normalized site EUI
weather_normalized_source_eui_kbtu_sqft	number	Weather-normalized source EUI
electricity_use_kwh	number	Electricity use (kWh)
natural_gas_use_therms	number	Natural gas use (therms)
district_steam_use_kbtu	number	District steam use (kBtu)
water_use_kgal	number	Water use (kgal)
total_ghg_emissions_metric_tons_co2e	number	Total GHG emissions (metric tons CO2e)
direct_ghg_emissions_metric_tons_co2e	number	Direct GHG emissions (metric tons CO2e)
indirect_ghg_emissions_metric_tons_co2e	number	Indirect GHG emissions (metric tons CO2e)
ghg_intensity_kgco2e_sqft	number	GHG emissions intensity (kgCO2e/ft2)
reporting_status	string	Compliance reporting status
compliance_status	string	Ordinance compliance status
penalty_imposed	number	Penalty amount (where published)
ll97_emissions_limit	number	NYC LL97 carbon cap (where applicable)
chicago_energy_rating	integer	Chicago's 0-4 star energy rating

Usage Notes

Jurisdictions are scraped sequentially. Each jurisdiction is a separate API call with skip/limit pagination. Large runs (all jurisdictions, no maxItems limit) will take several minutes.

Data update frequency varies. NYC LL84 publishes annual snapshots, typically 12-18 months behind the calendar year. Other jurisdictions vary. Check each portal's "last updated" metadata if recency matters.

Field coverage is uneven by design. NYC has the richest schema (BBL, BIN, full energy breakdown). Chicago reports at a coarser level. The normalized schema makes cross-jurisdiction comparison possible — null fields in a row tell you the jurisdiction does not publish that metric, not that data is missing.

No proxy required. All endpoints are public Socrata APIs with no authentication or IP restrictions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper cost to run? US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing. Each building record scraped counts as one event. A full NYC LL84 pull (~28,000 records) costs approximately $0.03 USD. A full multi-jurisdiction run across all five cities (~100,000 records) runs approximately $0.10 USD.

What data can I get from US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper? US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper returns one record per building per disclosure year, including ENERGY STAR Score, site/source EUI, electricity use, natural gas use, GHG emissions, property type, floor area, and compliance status where available.

Can I filter by year? US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper supports a minYear input that applies a server-side date filter before data is returned.

Does US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper need proxies? US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper does not require proxies. All source APIs are public Socrata endpoints without IP restrictions or authentication.

Which jurisdictions are covered? US Municipal Energy Benchmarking Disclosure Scraper currently covers NYC (LL84), Chicago, Seattle, Montgomery County MD, and Cincinnati. Additional jurisdictions with Socrata-hosted open data are on the expansion roadmap.