Does this apply to apartment buildings?

The commercial ordinance centers on nonresidential buildings above the size threshold. Large multifamily buildings fall under the state AB 802 benchmarking rule instead, so the exact obligation depends on building type. Check both the city page and the state program to be sure.

Is benchmarking the same as the energy audit?

No. Benchmarking is the annual filing that scores a year of utility bills through Portfolio Manager. The audit is a less frequent, deeper engineering review that finds specific waste. A building subject to the ordinance can owe both on different schedules.

What happens if I just do not report?

The city can issue administrative penalties under the Environment Code, and noncompliance becomes part of the public record. At last public report the per-violation amounts were modest, but they recur until you file. Fixing the underlying energy use usually costs less over time.

Will my building's number be public?

The city publishes benchmarking data that a reader can sort by address, so a building's reported energy use is broadly visible. How much detail appears can change year to year. Review the current dataset to see exactly what is shown.

Analysis archive | Clean Energy SF

The archive

NOV 2026San Francisco's building energy law, and who lands at the bottom · The city makes large commercial buildings report their energy use every year.
NOV 2026Floating wind off Morro Bay, and what it would mean for your meter · Federal leases put large floating wind areas in deep water off the central coast.
NOV 2026Diablo Canyon gets about five more years, and who signed off · California agreed to run PG&E's last nuclear plant to roughly 2030.
NOV 2026The ridge that keeps its lights when PG&E cuts the power · On the San Mateo coast ridge, where PG&E's planned shutoffs go dark first, the state is testing whether to cut the end of a long line loose and run it on local solar and batteries.
NOV 2026The new flat charge on your PG&E bill, explained for San Francisco · In 2024 the state approved a fixed monthly charge for PG&E customers, with the first amount phasing in from late 2025.
NOV 2026The Bay's ferries go electric, and the dock becomes the hard part · San Francisco Bay Ferry is going battery-electric, and the quiet half of the job is turning each dock into a high-power charger the local grid was never built to feed.
NOV 2026The Oakland sewage plant that runs a power surplus · East Bay Municipal Utility District's treatment plant on the estuary turns food scraps and sludge into electricity, and sells what it does not use.
NOV 2026Power Saver Rewards: getting paid to power down on the grid's worst evenings · On a few hot evenings each year, PG&E and California's grid operator pay a bill credit for cutting power between 4 and 9 p.m.
NOV 2026Altamont's methane: how the Bay Area's trash heap feeds the grid and the fuel pump · The Bay Area's garbage rots into methane east of the hills at the Altamont Landfill.
NOV 2026The tide through the Golden Gate, and the turbines that never came · The current under the Golden Gate is one of the most predictable power sources on the West Coast.
OCT 2026The air district's zero-NOx rule: why your next water heater may have to be electric · A regional air rule phases out gas water heaters and furnaces across nine Bay Area counties, starting with water heaters.
OCT 2026Where the delta wind meets the grid: Solano County's Montezuma Hills · Northeast of the city, in the one sea-level gap in the Coast Range, the same afternoon pressure that pours fog through the Golden Gate spins one of California's oldest wind corridors.
OCT 2026The bay's home batteries, dispatched together as one power plant · Across the city, home batteries are being pooled and dispatched together on hot evenings.
OCT 2026SFO's rooftop solar and the push to power its terminals behind the meter · San Francisco International has put solar on its roofs and set a zero-net-energy goal.
OCT 2026BART's power contract: greening the Bay's biggest single rail load · BART is one of the Bay Area's biggest single power users, and it has a plan to make the electricity that moves its trains carbon-free.
OCT 2026Where your noon solar goes when the fog burns off · Around midday, San Francisco and the rest of California make more solar power than they can use.
OCT 2026Helms Pumped Storage: the grid's Sierra battery, now charged by midday solar · A plant 200 miles east of the fog stores power by moving water between two mountain lakes.
OCT 2026SuperGreen: a few cents more for all-renewable power, and where it goes · CleanPowerSF already runs greener than PG&E's default.
OCT 2026NEM 3.0: how the net billing tariff rewrote the payback on a San Francisco rooftop · The 2023 switch from net metering to net billing cut the credit a rooftop array earns for exported power to roughly a quarter of its old value.
OCT 2026Altamont Pass: trading thousands of old turbines for a few tall ones · San Francisco's oldest regional wind resource is trading thousands of small 1980s turbines for a few tall ones.
OCT 2026Oakland's school buses could power the grid between runs · A yard full of electric school buses in Oakland can push power back to PG&E on hot afternoons.
OCT 2026The battery that let West Oakland retire its jet-fuel peaker · For decades a jet-fuel plant on the Oakland shoreline ran to hold up local grid reliability.
OCT 2026The cruise ship at Pier 27 is running on the city's grid · California's At-Berth rule shuts off ship diesels at the dock.
OCT 2026Panels for the city's rented flats: the SOMAH program · Most San Franciscans rent and never touch their own roof.
OCT 2026The Geysers: the Bay Area's baseload steam, kept running on wastewater · North of the bay sits the largest geothermal field on Earth, the one renewable feeding San Francisco that runs day and night.
OCT 2026GoSolarSF: the city's own rooftop rebate, and who it was built to reach · San Francisco ran a local solar check stacked on top of state and federal help.
OCT 2026San Francisco's long bid to buy PG&E's local wires · For years the city has tried to buy the distribution wires PG&E owns inside San Francisco so it could deliver its own power.
OCT 2026In Bayview, the sewage plant runs partly on its own gas · The SFPUC's Southeast plant captures methane from its sludge digesters and burns it for heat and power.
OCT 2026The Trans Bay Cable: the city's undersea power lifeline · A buried direct current line carries hundreds of megawatts under the bay to San Francisco.
OCT 2026The island's second act includes a lot of panels · Treasure Island's redevelopment plan promises on-site solar across thousands of new homes.
OCT 2026A home battery permit in San Francisco, start to finish · What it takes to get a lithium battery approved on an attached home, and the fire-code questions that decide where it can sit.
OCT 2026The East Shore's silver roofs, added up · From Oakland to Richmond, the bay's flat industrial roofs are its biggest unused solar surface.
OCT 2026The gas ban that lost in court, and what it means for San Francisco · A restaurant group and gas interests beat Berkeley's gas ban in federal court.
OCT 2026Fog Takes Some Solar Hours. Less Than the Lore Says. · San Francisco's microclimates are real, but the fog penalty for west-side rooftop solar is smaller than the sidewalk wisdom claims.
OCT 2026Charging at the curb: SF's pilot season on city streets · San Francisco put Level 2 chargers at the curb in several neighborhoods to test whether street parkers can finally plug in.
OCT 2026The city's mountain hydropower, a century on · San Francisco runs a carbon-free hydropower system fed by Sierra snow.
OCT 2026The interconnection queue is the region's quiet bottleneck · From a Noe Valley rooftop to a utility-scale solar farm, connecting to the grid takes longer than building it.
OCT 2026Free batteries for the hills, almost: how the state's SGIP equity tiers work in San Francisco · California will pay for a home battery to ride out a shutoff, and for some households it covers nearly all of it.
OCT 2026New homes in San Francisco carry solar by law, and the fine print decides how much · California requires most new homes to be built with rooftop solar.
OCT 2026Muni's electric buses and the yards that have to charge them · Trolleybuses already run on the wire.
OCT 2026Humboldt's floating wind lease: the bay watches and waits · Floating turbines suit the deep water off the north coast.
SEP 2026Stacking rebates for a heat pump water heater in a San Francisco Victorian · Federal, state, and local programs can combine to cover most of a heat pump water heater conversion.
SEP 2026Undergrounding the wires: PG&E's slow answer to fire season · PG&E is burying thousands of miles of power line to cut wildfire risk.
SEP 2026The neighborhood built to island from day one · Treasure Island's redevelopment folded a microgrid into the plan.
SEP 2026The Sunset Reservoir's panels, and the bigger public-roof map behind them · The city's best-known municipal array sits on a covered reservoir in the fog.
SEP 2026San Francisco's gas ban, one cycle in · The city electrified new construction first.
SEP 2026Three community choice programs, three different bills · Clean Power Alliance, MCE, and Sonoma Clean Power buy power for different corners of California.